




■IV 




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COHRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE SHOP COMMITTEE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE 
SHOP COMMITTEE 

A HANDBOOK FOR 
EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE 



BY 
WILLIAM LEAVITT STODDARD 

A. M„ HARVARD 

Administrator for the National War Labor 
Board, 1918-1919 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1919 

A.U rights reserved 



€° 



3« 



COPTEIGHT, 1919 
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1919. 





MAY -7 1919 


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©CI.A525366 


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FOEEWOED 

This book is neither a treatise, a history, nor a com- 
plete study of the shop committee movement in the 
United States and abroad. It is primarily a hand- 
book, designed to present only the essential principles 
and facts about this movement to those who desire to 
know what shop committees are and how they work 
in a few of the many instances in which they have been 
established. 

This book is largely the result of the writer's experi- 
ence as an administrator for the National War Labor 
Board, somewhat broadened by research in the field 
outside of the activities of that Board. This field is 
but recently come under cultivation: the shop com- 
mittee is a new thing in industry and is still in the 
stage of experiment. All the signs, however, indicate 
that the experiment is a promising one and that for 
many years to come workingmen and employers will 
continue in increasing numbers to develop intra-factory 
machinery intended to eliminate friction, bring about 
good relations, and promote the practice and extension 
of genuinely collective bargaining. 

As an imperfect record of the achievements of recent 
months in this direction, this volume is respectfully 
offered to the interested public. 

Wm. Leavitt Stoddard. 

Cambridge, Mass. 
March, 1919. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Early Beginnings 1 

II The War Labor Board Plan .... 10 

III General Principles 21 

IV The Basis of Eepresentation ... 31 
V The Lynn Plan 41 

VI Three Characteristic Plans .... 55 

VII Election Machinery 64 

VIII Procedure 74 

IX Shop Committees in Action . . . .82 

X The Shop Committee and the I'nions 91 

Appendix 101 



THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

CHAPTEE I 

THE EARLY BEGINNINGS 

It would be very interesting to make a study of the 
causes and origins of the shop committee movement. If 
we went at it painstakingly, we might well find our- 
selves back at the dawn of industrial history when a 
single cave man employer bargained collectively with a 
committee of his hired men concerning the piece rate 
to be paid for killing wolves or digging clams. The fact 
is that the idea which is to-day finding expression in the 
shop committee movement is as old as any idea in the 
world. Its application, however, is relatively new and 
has, therefore, a relatively short history. 

For a considerable period as time is measured in this 
age of rapid change, collective bargaining has been the 
subject of practical experiment in the garment-making 
industries in the United States, and much has there 
been done in the way of securing peaceful and equitable 
settlement of disputes through machinery which is simi- 
lar in purpose to that of the shop committee as it is de- 
scribed in this book. An account of what has been ac- 
complished in this particular field may be found in 
" Law and Order in Industry," by Julius Henry Cohen, 
and the historic relationship between the movement 
there described and that which is springing up to-day 
may easily be seen. 

1 



2 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

The Colorado Plan 

Probably the most notable early American example 
of a shop committee system as it is now in course of 
development is the Colorado Plan. This plan of repre- 
sentation was adopted late in 1915 in order to control 
relations between the men and management of the Col- 
orado Fuel and Iron Company. With the circum- 
stances of the strike which preceded the adoption of this 
plan we are not here concerned except to make this re- 
mark : apparently the adoption of this plan has brought 
about industrial peace in the section of Colorado in- 
volved. At the very least it has removed many of the 
causes of the intensely bitter warfare which at one time 
called the attention of the country to the Colorado situa- 
tion and the labor policies of the Eockefeller interests. 

The story of this plan has often been told, most re- 
cently perhaps in " Industry and Humanity," by W. L. 
MacKenzie King, who had much to do with its incep- 
tion. 

I choose, however, to quote a brief description of this 
plan from the report of the Federal Commission on the 
Labor Difficulties in the Coal Fields of Colorado, ap- 
pointed by the President in 1914. "Your Commission 
knows nothing just like it in force anywhere," said the 
report, after declaring that the Colorado plan was a 
" new departure in the United States." " The impor- 
tance of it, as an effort on the part of a large corpora- 
tion to regulate its relations with its own employees, by 
contracting with them instead of through a trade agree- 
ment made with a labor union, justifies your Commis- 
sion in discussing this plan with great care. . . . 

"The essential features of the plan seem to your Commis- 
sion to be ( 1 ) that the relations between the company and its 
employees as a body are defined by contract; (2) that every 
employee is guaranteed the right to belong to a labor union 
or not, as he pleases; (3) and that the men in each mine 



THE EAELY BEGINNINGS 3 

under this contract are entitled to choose their own represen- 
tatives, these representatives being protected against abuse by 
the company by a clause in the contract which entitles them, 
if they have been discriminated against because of their action 
as representatives of the men, to appeal to the industrial com- 
mission of the state; and the contract binds the company on 
this point, also, to accept as final the finding of the State in- 
dustrial commission. The contract provides that any miner 
having a grievance, or any group of miners, may appeal from 
one authority to another until the president of the company 
is reached. The influence of this provision, although the con- 
tract has been in operation so short a time, has been greatly 
to modify the attitude of the mine foremen and mine superin- 
tendents and of the subordinate officials. . . . 

u The plan provides further for the selection of four joint 
committees representative of the company and of its em- 
ployees: (1) on industrial cooperation and conciliation; (2) 
on safety and accidents; (3) on sanitation, health and hous- 
ing; and (4) on recreation and education. This part of the 
plan went into operation only with the beginning of this year. 
It evidently contemplates the most far-reaching cooperation 
between the employees as a body and the corporation, as to all 
matters which affect the working and living conditions of the 
employees." 

British Experience 

In Great Britain, about the same time, there was 
growing up a shop, or as it is termed there, a " works " 
committee movement which is in many ways similar to 
the Colorado plan. This movement developed rapidly. 
In 1917, the reconstruction Committee, which later be- 
came the Ministry of Reconstruction, appointed a sub- 
committee with J. H. Whitley as chairman, to report on 
practical methods of improving the relations between 
capital and labor. A number of other reports on the 
same general subject were made subsequent. 

In the summary of the preliminary tVhitley report 
occurs an often-quoted sentence which expresses a truth 
fundamental to the whole shop committee movement: 

" The feeling in the minds of the workers that their 
conditions of work and destinies are being determined 



4 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

by a distant authority over which they have no influence 
requires to be taken into consideration, not only by the 
Government, but by the unions themselves." 

The Whitley report, however, did more than merely 
to call attention to a state of mind, important as that 
alone was. It specifically recommended the widest 
establishment of works or shop co mm ittees with certain 
definite functions. It outlined an entire system of in- 
dustrial government, one vital branch of which is the 
shop committee. Except in few instances has the move- 
ment in this country gone as far as the Whitley report, 
but if we wish to look at the problem broadly and with 
an eye to the future, it should be realized that the 
shop committee is, after all, but one of the parts of a 
mechanism for the adjustment of the daily relations 
between capital and labor. 

For each industry in England this report proposed 
a Joint Industrial Council, " to have as its object the 
regular consideration of matters affecting the progress 
and well-being of the trade from the point of view of 
all those engaged in it, so far as this is consistent with 
the general interest of the community." The type of 
organization which was suggested for the industries was 
something quite new. At the top there was to be a joint 
industrial council — national; lower down, a joint in- 
dustrial council — district or local; and finally, at the 
bottom, works committees — for the individual shop or 
plant. Each body, as the word " joint" implies, was 
to be composed of representatives both of men and of 
management. In other words, for each great trade or 
industry there was to be established a three-fold, semi- 
public governmental system, built up in such a way as 
to represent fairly both capital and labor, both factory, 
district and nation. 



THE EARLY BEGINNINGS 5 

Its Wide Scope 

An idea of the wide scope which the acceptance of the 
Whitley report by the British public has given to these 
newly created joint councils and committees may be 
gained when it is realized that among the questions 
taken up by men and management and threshed out 
jointly are : 

(1) The better utilization of the practical knowledge 
and experience of the work people. 

(2) Means for securing to the work people a greater 
share in and responsibility for the determination and 
observance of the conditions under which their work 
is carried on. 

(3) The settlement of the general principles govern- 
ing the conditions of employment,, including the methods 
of fixing, paying, and readjusting wages, having regard 
to the need for securing to the work people a share in 
the increased prosperity of the industry. 

(4) The establishment of regular methods of nego- 
tiation for issues arising between employers and work 
people, with a view both to the prevention of differences, 
and to their better adjustment when they appear. 

(5) Means of insuring to the work people the great- 
est possible security of earnings and employment, with- 
out undue restriction upon change of occupation or 
employer. 

(6) Methods of fixing and adjusting earnings, piece- 
work prices, etc., and of dealing with the many diffi- 
culties which arise with regard to the method and 
amount of payment apart from the fixing of general 
standard rates, which are alreadv covered by paragraph 
(3). 

(?) Technical education and training. 

(8) Industrial research and the full utilization of 
its results. 

(9) The provision of facilities for the full considera- 



6 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

tion and utilization of inventions and improvement de- 
signed by work people, and for the adequate safeguard- 
ing of the rights of the designers of such improvements. 

(10) Improvements of processes, machinery, and or- 
ganization and appropriate questions relating to manage- 
ment and the examination of industrial experiments, 
with special reference to cooperation in carrying new 
ideas into effect and full consideration of the work 
people's point of view in relation to them. 

(11) Proposed legislation affecting the industry. 

With some few exceptions, the shop committee idea 
may be said to have remained dormant in the United 
States during the period in which the groundwork of 
the structure thus pictured in the Whitley report was 
being laid. But the entrance of the United States 
into the Great War in the spring of 1917 was speedily 
to require a development similar to that which had 
taken place in England. During the first feverish 
twelve months of preparation after the declaration of 
hostilities against Germany, no real attempt was made 
to remove the basic cause of strikes. Strikes were 
discouraged by public opinion, but that was all. 

War Labor Board and Shop Committees 

Late in the spring of 1918, however, the National 
War Labor Board was created by presidential proclama- 
tion, and immediately began to act as court of last resort 
in industrial disputes in which War production was 
threatened. Almost in the first award of this body 
the works or shop committee idea was adopted as a 
means of promoting sound relations between employer 
and employee, and as a means, further, of securing 
what was most urgently needed by the nation at that 
time, namely, maximum war production. 

With the history of this Board in general we have 



THE EAELY BEGINNINGS 7 

nothing to do here; that belongs rather to a discussion 
of the development of arbitration. But it is both per- 
tinent and well within the truth to say that the most 
valuable single achievement of the National War Labor 
Board was the impetus given by it to the shop committee 
movement. 

The principles upon which the Board operated, 
formally agreed to by representatives of capital and 
labor, contained this declaration : " The right of 
workers to organize in trades-unions and to bargain 
collectively through chosen representatives is recognized 
and affirmed." 

Here was the authorization, if any were needed, for 
the insertion in award after award of provisions call- 
ing for the establishment of shop committee systems, 
and in a following chapter will be found the shop 
committee plan as worked out by the experts of the 
Board. " The encouragement of mutual adjustments 
and collective bargaining as between employer and em- 
ployees," runs one sentence in the instructions issued 
to examiners assigned to administer awards, " will prob- 
ably prove the most valuable and lasting work which 
an administrative examiner can perform." 

During these same war months, the principle of col- 
lective bargaining was consistently advanced by the 
Federal Government in practically all its direct and 
indirect dealings with labor, and thus there was estab- 
lished a solid body of experience and opinion in favor 
of the fundamental theory upon which the shop commit- 
tee movement rests. This movement, begun in this 
fashion, is that with which we are chiefly concerned 
in the following pages. 1 

i The literature on the shop committee and the general 
movement toward democratic control of industry is relatively 
new and correspondingly small. Great Britain, as might be 
expected, furnishes the bulk. The books listed below bear more 



8 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

The Economic Need 

We shall see in Chapter X that the real economic 
need for shop committees in American as well as in 
British factories during the war and after came from 
the fact that in spite of the great value of the trades 
unions in collective bargaining, the trades unions were 
not and never had been organized to handle efficiently 
the many intimate, localized problems of the individual 

or less directly on the subject matter of the present volume, 
particularly the book by W. L. MacKenzie King and the re- 
prints of official English documents published by the United 
States Shipping Board. 

" War Time Control of Industry, The Experience of Eng- 
land," Howard L. Gray. The Macmillan Co. 

"The Great Change," Charles W. Wood. Boni and Live- 
right. 

" Labor and Capital after the War," edited by S. J. Chap- 
man. John Murray. 

" Industrial Reconstruction," edited by Huntley Carter. 
E. P. Dutton. 

" Industry and Humanity," W. L. MacKenzie King. 

" The Aims of Labor," Arthur Henderson. B. W. Huebsch. 

" The Creative Impulse in Industry," Helen Marot. E. P. 
Dutton. 

" Collective Bargaining and Trade Agreements in the Brew- 
ery, Metal, Teaming, and Building Trades of San Francisco, 
Calif.," Ira B. Cross. University of California Press. 

"Fair Play for the Workers," Percy S. Grant. Moffatt 
Yard & Co. 

"Workshop Committees," C. G. Renold. The Survey Asso- 
ciates. 

Memorandum on the Industrial Situation After the War 
(reprint of the memorandum issued by the Garton Founda- 
tion, London ) . United States Shipping Board. 

Report of an Inquiry as to Works Committees (reprint of a 
report made by the British Ministry of Labor ) . United 
States Shipping Board. 

"Works Committees and Joint Industrial Councils," A. B. 
Wolfe. United States Shipping Board. (Contains valuable 
bibliography. ) 

Monthly Review, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. S. 
Dept. of Labor, passim. 



THE EAELY BEGINNINGS 9 

factory. And for the matter of that, neither were 
employers properly organized to cope with these same 
problems. There was, in short, a sheer lack of ma- 
chinery designed to eliminate internal shop friction, 
whether over large matters or small matters. One 
who has studied typical plants which have well planned 
shop committee systems and typical plants which are 
still operating in the old disorganized fashion, can not 
hesitate to agree that neither the recognition of the 
union nor the introduction of " efficiency " ideas will 
do the good — to employer, to employee and to the 
public — that can be gained by falling into step with 
evolution and utilizing the advantages of this new 
form of industrial self-government. 

" The movement," says W. L. MacKenzie King in 
his book above referred to, "is not without its critics 
among both employers and labor leaders, and it en- 
counters of necessity the opposition of upholders of 
militancy in industrial affairs and the advocates of class 
hatreds. It will reveal shortcomings, make mistakes, 
experience setbacks and failures; and it is probable 
that some time must elapse before its benefits will be 
appreciated. ' The change of attitude involved is too 
vital, the field of activity is too large, to hope for any 
but gradual development/ But the scheme has in it 
the germ of all that has made for freedom in political 
evolution; and it has to promote it the genius for self- 
government which the British peoples have evolved 
through centuries of struggle. It is therefore destined 
to win its way. Meanwhile, it will remain the surest 
method of approach to the solution of the problems of 
Industry which wide knowledge of actual conditions, 
combined with many-sided opinion, has thus far 
evolved." ** 

i My italics. W. L. S. 



CHAPTEE II 

THE WAR LABOR BOARD PLAN 

Beginning late in the spring of 1918 the United States 
Government, as a war measure, began to organize shop 
committees and to develop the theory and practice of 
the shop committee system. The Government per- 
formed this function through the National War Labor 
Board and other war-time agencies. Its main purpose 
was to attempt to set the house of capital and labor 
in order, first so that essential industries would be 
kept running during the hostilities, and second so that 
industry would be more stable and prosperous during 
the period of demobilization and reconstruction. 

It may be noted in passing that it was not a new 
thing for Uncle Sam to play the part of organizer of 
cooperative associations. For many years the United 
States Department of Agriculture has most energetically 
promoted the formation of farmers' cooperatives, which 
are fundamentally collective bargaining associations. 
This work of the Washington government has brought 
benefits to those living in the rural regions that can 
be measured in dollars and cents, and has also served 
as a precedent for similar activities in the world of 
industry. 

The Pittsfield Awurd 

One of the first awards of the National War Labor 
Board, if not the very first to recommend a shop com- 
mittee system, was the award in the case of the em- 
ployees versus the General Electric Co., Pittsfield 

10 



THE WAE LABOR BOARD PLAN 11 

Works, Massachusetts. Towards the end of this award 
are these paragraphs : 

" Election of Committees. 

" The election by the workers of their representative depart- 
ment committees to present grievances and mediate with the 
company shall be held, during the life of this award, in some 
convenient public building in the neighborhood of the plant, 
to be selected by the examiner of this board assigned to su- 
pervise the execution of this award, or, in the case of his 
absence, by some impartial person, a resident of Pittsfield, to 
be selected by such examiner. Such examiner, or his substi- 
tute, shall preside over the first and all subsequent elections 
during the life of this award, and have the power to make the 
proper regulations to secure absolute fairness. 

" In the elections the examiner shall provide, wherever 
practicable, for the minority representation by limiting the 
right of each voter to a vote for less than the total number of 
the committee to be selected. Elections shall be held annually. 

" Duties of Department Committees. 

" The duties of the department committees shall be confined 
to the adjustment of disputes which the shop foremen and the 
division superintendents and the employees have been unable 
to adjust. 

" The department committees shall meet annually and shall 
select from among their number three ( 3 ) employees who shall 
be known as the committee on appeals. This committee shall 
meet with the management for the purpose of adjusting dis- 
putes which the department committees have failed to adjust." 

It so happened that the writer was assigned to act 
as the examiner or administrator of the Pittsfield award, 
and can therefore speak hoth from official and personal 
observation of this very interesting experiment in in- 
dustrial government. 

At this time, the latter part of the summer of 1918, 
the Pittsfield Works of the General Electric Company 
employed about 7,000 men and women. The plant was 
engaged in manufacturing many important articles used 
directly and indirectly by the Government and neces- 
sary for the war program of the Government. Maxi- 
mum production and the elimination of internal strife 



12 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

was therefore a matter of public concern. It should 
be added that while a majority of the employees were 
members of organized labor, the plant was and still is 
an open shop. 

For some time before the award of the National 
War Labor Board there had been in existence in this 
plant a General Works Committee, which consisted of 
about fifty employees, and which was elected by the 
rank and file of the workers at an election held each 
year in the factory buildings. For various reasons this 
shop committee, or shop committee system, was not 
satisfactory to the employees who came before the Board. 
One of the reasons was that a single general committee 
could not handle promptly and fairly the grievances 
which constantly came up in the plant. The justice 
of this claim was admitted by the Board, and a new 
system was therefore ordered. 

By way of further explanation it should be said that 
before the award of the War Labor Board there had 
been a serious strike in the Pittsfield Works. This 
strike had brought about an era of bad feeling between 
men and management which lasted several months and 
which seriously complicated and made difficult the task 
of working out calmly and in joint conference the 
details of the award. I mention this fact not for the 
purpose of opening old sores, but in order to illustrate 
a very important fact in the shop committee movement 
— the fact that unless both the employer and the 
employees have the right spirit, the spirit of coopera- 
tion, the spirit of dealing man to man in sensible, 
reasonable fashion, it is almost impossible to set going 
an orderly and workable shop committee system. 

Features of the Plan 

The Pittsfield shop committee plan of. the War Labor 
Board is not like most of the plans subsequently ap- 



THE WAK LABOR BOARD PLAN 13 

proved by the Board. For example, it provided that the 
elections should be held, not in the shop, but in some 
convenient public building. The reason for this pro- 
vision in this particular case was that the Board desired 
to give neither side any possible grounds for claiming 
that either the company or the unions had influenced 
the elections. Back of this lay the declaration of the 
Board, laid down as a general principle for all industry 
during the war, that " In establishments where the 
union shop exists the same shall continue. ... In 
establishments where union and non-union men and 
women now work together and the employer meets 
only with employees or representatives engaged in said 
establishments, the continuance of such conditions shall 
not be deemed a grievance." 

In plain English, this meant that it was the duty 
of the Board to see to it that the unions did not take 
advantage of the war and of the war-time establish- 
ment of shop committees to force union recognition. 
It also means that it was the duty of the Board to see 
to it that every employee in the plant, whether belong- 
ing to a union or not, had the chance to vote and run 
for office. 

Another consideration had much to do with the de- 
cree that the elections should be held on neutral ground. 
This was that there was then a feeling of hostility among 
certain of the employees against the company: a feel- 
ing so deep that almost without exception the leaders 
testified that if the elections were held inside the plant 
the men would not vote. At the same time, however, 
these same leaders declared that the former elections, 
which had been held in the plant and managed by 
the company, had been absolutely fair and square. 
But there was the prejudice of the rank and file to 
overcome, and the War Labor Board thought that the 
best way to overcome it was to hold the elections in a 



14 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

place where no one could pretend that either the unions 
or the company could control in any way, shape or 
manner. 

There was still another reason for selecting "some 
convenient public building." One of the principles of 
the Board declared that workers have the right "to 
organize in trades-unions and to bargain collectively 
through chosen representatives." The right to choose 
representatives was thought to carry with it the right 
to choose them freely, or as freely as was consistent 
with other circumstances. The other circumstances 
which limited this freedom were the declarations of the 
Board to which labor and capital were pledged for 
the period of the war, to the effect that labor unions 
should not seek to obtain recognition through the elec- 
tion of committees, and that employers should not 
discriminate against union employees. In theory, the 
argument went, nothing could better guarantee a free, 
uninfluenced election than to have it in a public build- 
ing under the supervision of an officer of the Govern- 
ment. 

I have gone into these matters in some detail because 
the Pittsfield shop committee system was one of the first 
attempts of the War Labor Board to put the theory 
of the shop committee into practice. As often hap- 
pens, there was nothing wrong with the theory, though 
the application of it, as will be seen later, might have 
been improved. 

The Pittsfield award contained another provision 
which was discarded in subsequent awards. This was 
the provision for minority representation. The idea was 
this : Eoughly one third of the employees of the Pitts- 
field Works, or a minority of the whole, did not belong 
to any union. The Board, fearing that the union em- 
ployees might control the elections and shut the non- 
union employees out completely, gave instructions that 



THE WAR LABOR BOARD PLAN 15 

when, for example, two union and one non-union candi- 
dates were nominated on the same slate, each voter 
should mark his ballot for two instead of for three. It 
was calculated that in this way the minority would be 
sure to secure a fair share of the offices. In practice, 
however, it was speedily found that with one or two 
exceptions the minority favored all the nominees and 
offered none of their own. Most of the elections were 
unanimous. By simply allowing great freedom in mak- 
ing nominations, the minority had every opportunity to 
be represented. 

Two Kinds of Committees 

As defined in the award the shop committees were to 
be of two kinds. First, there were to be department 
or shop committees representing the employees of the 
different sections of the works, elected by the employees 
of each section, voting separately as a section. Second, 
there was to be a general or appeals committee of three, 
elected by the members of the shop committees, meet- 
ing in a convention called for that purpose. The shop 
committees were to have the duty of adjusting disputes 
which individual employees had failed to adjust either 
with their foremen or their division superintendent. 
The appeals committee, as its name implies, was to 
take up with the management cases which the shop 
or department committees had been unable to settle 
satisfactorily. 

This new plan was a great improvement over the 
single General Works committee of fifty which had 
previously represented the employees in dealing with 
the management. As compared with the plans worked 
out by the Board in some other places, however, as for 
example, the Lynn General Electric Works, the Bridge- 
port munition plants, and the Philadelphia Rapid Tran- 
sit Company, the Pittsfield plan was incomplete. 



16 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

Nevertheless the Pittsfield plan was put into opera- 
tion. The steps in this process may be briefly summed 
up: 

The first step was to district the plant. The award 
called for " department " committees. But what was 
a department ? Were the cranemen, for example, whose 
work took them all over the plant, and who reported 
to various foremen, to be considered a department? 
Should a department consist of a more or less fixed 
number of workers; or should a department be defined 
as all the workers under a single foreman? Should 
a department be on one floor, or might one department 
include a floor and a gallery, or two floors? Should 
a department be composed of workers of the same 
trade? In short, what ought to be the basis of repre- 
sentation? 

Working It Out 

These questions were not answered in Pittsfield to 
the complete mutual satisfaction of men and manage- 
ment, and to that extent and for that the reason the 
Pittsfield plan as it was in operation as late as March 
1919 cannot be termed a good example of a working 
shop committee system. The Pittsfield management 
opposed, on principle, the idea of holding the elections 
outside the plant, and for this and other reasons the 
districting of the plant was left to the men and the 
representative of the War Labor Board. The plant was 
not districted as it should have been, that is, coopera- 
tively by the joint counsel of men and management. 
In a later chapter the theory of districting is con- 
sidered in detail. It is a most important question, if 
not the most important single question which has to 
be met in working out a shop committee system. 

In spite of the difficulty just referred to, the elec- 
tions were held in a vacant store near the plant, used 



THE WAE LABOR BOARD PLAN 17 

by the city as a polling place. Owing partly to the 
fact that the elections were held outside company time, 
namely from 5 to 8 or 9 p. m., the attendance, while 
representative, was not as large as it would have been 
had the elections been held under the most favorable 
circumstances in the plant itself. But the committees 
were chosen as decreed by the award, were recognized 
by the management, and proceeded to perform their 
functions. Thus ended the duty of Uncle Sam in his 
pioneer role of industrial organizer. 

During the same summer and fall of 1918, the War 
Labor Board decreed that the Pittsfield shop committee 
system should be installed in several other plants which 
were manufacturing war material for the Government. 
From the reports which came from these places, as well 
as from Bridgeport, where a gigantic problem con- 
fronted the examiner of the Board assigned to the 
supervision of the Bridgeport award, there was developed 
a standardized plan for shop committee systems. This 
plan was not intended to fit every industry without some 
alteration. But it did — and still does — embody all 
the basic principles which experience in the field has 
proved to be sound and workable. 

I quote this plan in full at this point. In the next 
and following chapters the most important practical 
problems involved in putting it into operation will be 
taken up : 

National War Labor Board 
washington 

PROCEDURE 

Elections of Shop Committees 

In cases where elections are required to be held for the pur- 
pose of selecting Shop Committees, the following shall be the 
procedure : 



18 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

1. Number of Committeemen 

Shop Committees shall be selected to meet with an equal 
or a lesser number of representatives to be selected by the 
employer. Each department or section of the shop shall be 
entitled to one committeeman for each one hundred employees 
employed in the department or section. If in any department 
or section there shall be employees in excess of any even hun- 
dred, then an additional committeeman may be elected pro- 
vided the additional employees beyond the even hundred shall 
be fifty or more; if less than fifty, no additional representation 
shall be allowed. As an example : In a department or section 
employing 330 men, three committeemen will be elected; in a 
department employing 375 men, four committeemen will be 
elected. 

2. Nominations 

Due notice having been given of an election, 10 days shall be 
allowed during which nominations may be made for candidates. 
In order that a candidate's name may appear on the ballot, 
such person must be nominated either at a meeting of the 
employees or any part of them duly called for that purpose, 
or by petition signed by not less than 10 per cent of those 
qualified to vote for any candidate so nominated. 

a. By Convention 

Meetings for nomination of candidates may be held at any 
places named in the calls for the same. The nominations and 
the attendance of at least 10 per cent of the persons entitled 
to vote for nominees at any such meeting must be certified to 
by the chairman and secretary of the meeting. 

b. By Petition 

All nominating petitions must clearly name the candidate or 
candidates and have the signature of not less than 10 per 
cent of the bona fide employees qualified to vote for such 
candidate. 

c. Filing Nominations 

Nominations made either by meeting or by petition must be 
sent to the examiner of the National War Labor Board not 
later than 10 days after the notice of election is given, and the 
election shall be held on the fifth day next succeeding unless 
such day should be Saturday or Sunday or a holiday, in which 
event the election shall be held on the next successive work day. 



THE WAR LABOE BOARD PLAN 19 

d. Publishing Lists of Nominees 

Lists of candidates selected by convention or petition and 
distinctively designated, may be posted by their respective 
supporters on a bulletin board to be provided by the employer, 
convenient to the voting booths, to assist voters in marking 
their ballots. 

3. Elections 

a. Place 

The election shall be held in the place where the largest 
total vote of the men can be secured, consistent with fairness 
of count and full and free expression of choice, either in the 
shop or in some convenient public building, as the chief exam- 
iner shall decide after conference, if need be, with the Secretary 
of the National War Labor Board. 

b. Election Officers 

The election shall be conducted under the supervision of an 
examiner of the National War Labor Board, who shall select 
as assistants two or more employees of the department or sec- 
tion for which the election is held. These persons shall con- 
stitute the Election Board, which will conduct the election, 
count the votes, and certify as to the correctness of the count. 

An employee of the company to be nominated by t" e em- 
ployer, who shall preferably be the timekeeper or some one 
connected with the proper department or section, who is quali- 
fied to certify to and identify the voters as bona fide employees' 
shall assist the Election Board in its duties. 

c. Freedom from Undue Influence 

All elections shall be held in accordance with the Australian 
or secret ballot. The names of all the nominees shall be 
printed in alphabetical order on the ballot, which shall clearly 
state the number to be voted for. This ballot shall be in the 
form that it may be folded so as to conceal the nature of the 
vote. Each employee presenting himself shall be certified to 
as qualified to vote and handed a ballot by the tellers. Upon 
indicating upon the ballot by marking a cross opposite the 
names of the candidates for whom the employee wishes to vote, 
he shall himself place it in the ballot box. A booth or booths 
shall be provided where the employee may indicate his choice 
free from observation. 

Foremen and other officials of the company shall absent 
themselves from the election to remove ground for a claim of 
undue influence. 



20 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

d. Declaration of Election 

The candidates receiving the greatest number of votes shall 
be declared elected by the Election Board. In the event of a 
tie vote, the examiner of the National War Labor Board shall 
call for a new election within five days. 

4. Change of Procedure by Agreement 

After the initial election under the supervision of the exam- 
iner of the National War Labor Board, subsequent elections 
and any general rules or regulations pertaining to the selec- 
tion of Shop Committees may be carried out through agreement 
between the employer and the committee so elected. Proper 
provision should be made for reports of the Shop Committees 
from time to time to their respective constituencies. 

Approved by the Joint Chairmen, October 4, 1918. 

As this book goes to press, (April, 1919), the 
National War Labor Board is still in existence and is 
still promoting the shop committee movement. Should 
this Board continue by Act of Congress as a permanent 
industrial court, without question it will become one 
of the best possible sources of information in the country 
on the question of shop committee systems. In the brief 
history of this Board from its formation to date, it 
has been under the fire of both capital and labor. The 
unfriendly criticism which it has received has been un- 
fortunate for 'several reasons, but chiefly because it 
has led public attention away from the real and neces- 
sary constructive work which the Board has been doing 
from the very start. I refer of course to the establish- 
ment of shop committee systems, and from my copy 
of a memorandum entitled " Instructions to Examiners 
Assigned to Administer Awards," I quote the following 
sentence : 

" The encouragement of mutual adjustments and collective 
bargaining as between employer and employees, will probably 
prove the most valuable and lasting work which an Adminis- 
trative Examiner can perform." 



CHAPTER III 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES 

In Chapter I the history of the shop committee move- 
ment was briefly sketched, and in Chapter II the be- 
ginnings of the movement as promoted and standardized 
by the United States Government were related. At 
this point, before going into further detail, it will be 
valuable to try to get at the basic principles which 
underlie the shop committee plan of the National War 
Labor Board, and of the movement as it is spreading 
to-day. 

What are these principles? 

It will make it easier to understand and explain the 
shop committee if it is understood and realized at the 
start that a shop committee system is really an experi- 
ment in democratic industrial government. The word 
experiment is used because shop committee systems are 
in their infancy, and are rapidly changing in form. 
The words democratic industrial government are used 
because after all what a shop committee system actually 
does in a factory is to establish a system of govern- 
ment to control democratically the relations between 
employer and employee. 

A factory in which neither shop committees nor 
trades unions are recognized must necessarily be more 
or less of an autocracy, and recent events in Europe 
and elsewhere have demonstrated again to the world 
the old truth that an autocracy is practically no gov- 
ernment at all, because it is an unjust and unstable 
government. What is going on in the United States 

21 



22 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

to-day is, therefore, a revolution in industry. The ob- 
ject of this revolution is to overthrow obsolete auto- 
cratic methods of doing business between employer and 
employee and to substitute new and democratic methods. 

Compared to U. 8. Government 

The shop committee system of government does not 
resemble the kind of representative democratic govern- 
ment which we have, for example, in the United States. 
The theory of the American government is that the 
people elect their servants whose duty it is to make and 
execute laws under a constitution, which in turn can be 
changed by the people. The theory of the shop com- 
mittee system form of government is that the employees 
elect their representatives who meet with an equal num- 
ber of representatives of the management. Thus in the 
United States Government there is only one source of 
power, the people. In the shop committee system gov- 
ernment, there are two sources of power. This is what 
is commonly called " joint control," and the various 
branches of the government are called " joint com- 
mittees." 

But the phrase "joint control" is bound to be mis- 
understood if it is not explained further. The rela- 
tions between employer and employee in a factory hav- 
ing a shop committee system are controlled jointly or 
collectively up to a certain point only. The committee- 
men representing the employees may be able to agree 
with the committeemen representing the management on 
a large number of important matters, but when they 
fail to agree, the joint method of settling disputes is at 
an end : the matter goes to the manager, who> being in 
charge of the factory, has the veto power. The manager 
will side either with the employees or with his own 
representatives. In any case his decision is final, so far 
as the shop committee system is concerned. If, how- 



GEXERAL PRINCIPLES 23 

ever, the matter in dispute is vital to the employees, 
they may ask that it be arbitrated by outside parties, 
and they will probably threaten to stop work if it is not 
left to some impartial body, such as the War Labor 
Board. Such a case shows clearly that the shop com- 
mittee system is not in itself complete. 

In many shop committee plans, it is provided that 
when a decision of the manager is not satisfactory to the 
employees, the case shall go to outside arbitration. 

In the United States Government, on the other hand, 
the people are theoretically supreme, and there is no 
veto power over them. Their servants may not obey 
them, but at the next election a new set of servants 
can be selected. In the shop committee form of gov- 
ernment, the employees may, of course, get rid of repre- 
sentatives who are not satisfactory, and the manage- 
ment may do likewise with its representatives. But 
the point is that in a shop committee system the em- 
ployees have nothing to say about the selection of the 
representatives of the management, or of the manager, 
who is practically the president, with veto power; nor 
has the management anything to say about the selection 
of the representatives of the employees. In other 
words, in a shop committee system we have two different 
elements meeting for the purpose of adjusting and bar- 
gaining with each other. 

This contrast may be seen more clearly by comparing 
the shop committee form of government to the govern- 
ment of a genuinely cooperative industry in which the 
workers have a direct voice in the management because 
they are part owners of the enterprise. 

These remarks do not necessarily throw discredit on 
the shop committee theory. They are intended merely 
to make clear exactly what kind of a government the 
shop committee sets up, its advantages and its limita- 
tions. 



24 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

" Voice in the Management ** 

The phrase " voice in the management " applies to 
every well worked out shop committee system. " Joint 
control/' as explained above, is a misnomer. " Partner- 
ship/' writes W. L. MacKenzie King on this point, 
" is essentially a matter of status. It does not involve 
identity or similarity of function on the part of the 
partners, or equality of either service or rewards; but it 
does imply equality, as respects the right of representa- 
tion, in the determination of policy on matters of com- 
mon interest/' 

Let us now see, within the limits just explained, 
what sort of a system of government the shop com- 
mittee establishes. In other words, what are the 
branches of this form of government, what is its legisla- 
ture, its court, its executive? 

The " people " who are to set up this government are 
in two groups — employees and employers. So far' as 
the employees' side is concerned, the people are all em- 
ployees without regard to age, sex, or condition of em- 
ployment. If the system is to be truly representative, 
it must not disfranchise any employee, no matter 
whether he or she is an elevator man, a clerk, a scrub- 
woman, or a highly paid mechanic. But just as in the 
American government it is necessary to define the 
qualifications of the voter, so in a shop committee sys- 
tem it is necessary to define what an employee is. 

As a matter of fact, all the men and women, with 
one or two possible exceptions, who work in a modern 
American factory are employees. Unless the manager 
is also an owner, he is an employee: and so are his 
assistants from the general office down the line to the 
superintendents, foremen and leading hands. But for 
the purposes of shop committee government, it is neces- 
sary to divide employees into two classes, that which 
represents the management, and that which consists of 
\ 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES 25 

the rank and file of the workers. Therefore it is cus- 
tomary to disqualify from voting and participating in 
the employees' side of the system all those who have 
administrative duties. This commonly includes those 
who are employed in a supervisory capacity, and hence 
shuts out the manager and his staff, and the fore- 
men and leading hands. The reason for this is self- 
evident. 

In addition, it is usual to fix an age limit, say 21 
years ; to require that voters shall be American citizens, 
and so on. These details are discussed at some length 
in Chapter VII. 

The general principle here is, within the limits of cus- 
tom and common sense, to allow every employee to vote. 

Shop Committees — Their Functions 

The " people" having been defined, we now come to 
the first branch of the shop committee system, which is 
usually the shop committee itself. By its very name, 
this is a committee of the shop, that is to say, it repre- 
sents a shop, department or division of the plant. The 
plant, therefore, must be divided or districted just as a 
city is districted into wards each of which selects its 
members of the common council. The details of this 
process of districting are considered fully in Chapter 
IV. The general principle here is that every representa- 
tive system of government requires some device to insure 
that an elected representative actually represents the 
people who elected him, and that no other people or 
voters shared in that electing. Thus each district or 
shop in a plant determines for itself the members of 
its committee, which is the first branch of the system 
of government. 

The duty of the employee members of a shop com- 
mittee is to act as mediators or adjusters of disputes 
arising in their district between the employees and the 



\ 



26 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

foremen: to sit in session with the employer members 
of the committee as (1) a mediating and adjusting 
committee, and (2) as a court to hear and pass on 
cases coming before it. These duties are more fully de- 
tailed in later chapters. 

The second branch of the shop committee system is 
what is termed in the standard plan of the War Labor 
Board, the " General Works Committee." This com- 
mittee is higher in authority than the shop committees 
and has broader powers. It may be composed (1) 
of all the shop committee members, (2) of a fraction of 
the shop committee members, or, (3) of employees at 
large, not shop committee members. It is usually 
elected by the members of the shop committees them- 
selves, but it may be elected at a popular election in 
which all employees participate. 

The duty of a General Committee may be, (1) to 
sit as a court of appeals in matters coming up from 
the shop committees; (2) to act as a mediating and 
adjusting body between the whole body of employees and 
the management; (3) to make rules and regulations 
to govern elections and procedure. 

in some existing shop committee systems, the duty 
described under (3) is handled by a separate committee 
on rules. As will be seen later, there may be more 
than one general committee, though it is usual to have 
but one charged with the duties enumerated under (1) 
and (2). 

The General Works Committee, no matter whether 
called the Appeals Committee, the General Joint Com- 
mittee, or the General Adjustment Board, is, after all, 
the supreme joint council of employer and employee. 
It is a judicial council when it decides cases which come 
up on appeal. It is a legislative council when it decides 
on rules and regulations, wage rates, bonuses, and other 
matters affecting conditions of employment. It is also 



GEKEEAL PBINCIPLES 27 

an advisory body or kind of cabinet to the General 
Manager, when, as frequently occurs, it brings to his 
attention situations or complaints which might other- 
wise escape his notice. It is not an executive body 
for the reason that the execution or administration of 
its decisions and recommendations is the function of the 
management. 

The Management's Side 

Looking at the other half of this system of govern- 
ment, we find that the representatives of the manage- 
ment are, first of all, appointed instead of elected. 
The reason for their selection by appointment instead 
of election is that the management is one thing, usually 
one person or one small group of persons with a single 
head. The management chooses its representatives from 
those employees who are not " people " as defined above, 
that is to say, from its assistants, superintendents, 
department or division heads, general foremen, foremen, 
leading hands, and often cost clerks or paymasters. 

To deal with the individual employee the manage- 
ment selects foremen or leading hands. To represent 
the management's half of the joint shop committees, 
foremen again are generally chosen. To represent the 
management's half of a general committee, assistant 
managers, or department heads are usually selected. 
In some plants the management employs a special agent, 
often called " the industrial representative " who reports 
directly to the manager and who attends without vote 
the committee meetings so as to keep in constant touch 
with the workings of the plan of representation. 

Thus we see that the shop committee system is a 
system of government composed of a series of commit- 
tees with duties which differ but slightly, and which 
is organized and operated on the principle that as far 
as is practicable the relations between employer and 



28 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

employee should be adjusted by common counsel at joint 
meetings of accredited representatives of each side. 

The joint meeting is the characteristic thing about 
the shop committee form of industrial government. It 
is more than characteristic, it is f undamntal. The entire 
purpose of shop committee systems is to bring em- 
ployer and employee together face to face. To the 
minds of some keen employers and employees this move- 
ment means a return of the "good old days" when 
industry was small and the general manager personally 
knew Tom Jones in the foundry and dealt with him 
man to man, instead of through the medium of half 
a hundred subordinates. How to reestablish this kind 
of relationship in modern industry has been a problem 
which has puzzled many of the leaders in the world of 
labor as well as in the world of capital. At a critical 
time in the history of industry throughout the world, 
the shop committee offers itself as a solution of this 
problem. By setting up a simple plan of internal shop 
government on the principles just outlined, something 
of the old small shop atmosphere can be regained. 
The sense of aloofness between employer and employee 
vanishes when the manager realizes that his responsible 
agents are meeting daily with the men in committee 
sessions; and when the men, for their part, realize that 
the management believes that the rank and file should 
have a say in the way the business is managed. 

Cooperation 

But if a shop committee system is to be a success, it 
must be based on one other fundamental principle in ad- 
dition to those already mentioned. This is that from 
the very beginning a shop committee system must be a 
matter of cooperation. From the start it is essential 
that men and management should come together as 
nearly as possible on an equal footing and from that 



GENEKAL PEINCIPLES 29 

footing thresh out their problems with the utmost good 
nature and frankness. The management may feel that 
it possesses superior wisdom, but it need not exhibit this 
feeling. The men may feel that the management is 
trying to " slip one over " on them, but they ought to 
go in and use their brains and reason the matter out. 
In one great industrial plant in the United States the 
shop committee system failed because it was devised 
solely by the management and offered to the employees 
as a charity. In another factory a shop committee sys- 
tem nearly fell to pieces because the unions misunder- 
stood it and counselled a policy of " knocking." And 
in a third plant both sides got together on common 
ground from the beginning and out of two quite dif- 
ferent schemes, worked a new one which both declared 
to be preferable to either of the originals. Unless the 
basic principle be adopted that a shop committee sys- 
tem must be planned, established and operated collec- 
tively, it is as well to have none at all. 

All government, we are told, rests on the consent of 
the governed. A shop committee system of government 
is no exception to this rule. 

I emphasize this point for the reason that experience 
has shown it to be a vital one. The shop committee 
movement is in reality a part of the organized labor 
movement. If it is properly guided in the early years 
of its life it may prove to be a solution of many of the 
most vexing problems which confront the labor move- 
ment. The shop committee means in principle, not the 
recognition of the union, but the recognition of the 
fact that it is more efficient both for employer and em- 
ployee to handle their daily, intimate problems collec- 
tively instead of in the old way, individually. If then, 
an employer is to deal collectively with representative 
groups of his employees, it is essential that the desires 
of the employees should be made known and should be 



30 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

given at least equal weight with those of the employer. 

Some students of the shop committee go further than 
this and maintain that the employees are the sole judge 
in the matter of districting and determining represen- 
tation. Two heads are, however, generally wiser than 
one, and inasmuch as shop committee government is 
after all joint government, joint counsel should be held. 
But experience has also shown that no shop committee 
system introduced and put into operation by a manage- 
ment which considers itself morally or intellectually 
the superior of the men has ever really succeeded. 

These are the main principles of shop committee 
government. The list is not complete. For example, 
it is also an important principle that in the elections of 
shop committees the management should refrain from 
even an appearance of supervision. It should, of 
course, be reasonably assured that the elections are 
fair and free and open only to employees, and a joint 
committee of men and management might well agree 
on the rules governing the elections. But the elections 
are primarily the business of the employees, just as the 
appointment of the representatives of the management 
is primarily the business of the management. Another 
principle, discussed in detail in Chapter VIII, is that 
the spirit of the shop committee system must be entirely 
democratic; there should be the initiative, the referen- 
dum and the recall ; the records of all committees should 
be open and public to employees desiring to consult 
them ; and the system itself must be easy to amend after 
due consideration by both parties. 

If a shop committee system is founded on the prin- 
ciple outlined in this chapter and if it is motivated, 
above all, by the principle of genuine cooperation — 
not the kind of cooperation which means benevolent 
paternalism — it can be built in such a way as to out- 
last the lives of the men who helped to erect it. 



CHAPTEK IV 

THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION 

The first step in the practical application of the gen- 
eral principles of shop committee government is to di- 
vide the plant into shops, sections, districts, or depart- 
ments. This should be done jointly by a committee of 
employees meeting with representatives of the manage- 
ment. In order to secure a successful districting, it is 
necessary that this committee should be familiar with 
the geography of the plant and with the various kinds 
of work done throughout the plant. A successful job 
of districting will almost certainly insure a successful 
working plan, the reason being that a fair and just 
districting provides a fair and just basis of represen- 
tation, a thing that is fundamental to the entire system. 

Districting involves three factors: (1) the actual lo- 
cation and size of the district; (2) the size of the com- 
mittee or number of representatives of the workers; 
(3) the craft or occupation of the workers to be in- 
cluded in the district. 

In the Pittsfield award of the War Labor Board 
(see Chapter II), nothing was said about districting 
the plant. The Board assumed that the plant was al- 
ready divided in such a way as to make re-division un- 
necessary. As a matter of fact, some fifty departments 
had long been recognized in the Pittsfield Works as 
separate shops or departments, and there was no great 
demand for revising this arrangement. There was, 
however, some sharp difference of opinion between men 
and management as to whether certain departments 

31 



32 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

should be combined before choosing a committee, and 
as at that time the general principles of districting were 
not clearly understood and agreed on, the result was a 
more or less unsatisfactory compromise. I mention this 
fact because it indicates an error which can easily be 
avoided. 

Size of Constituency 

Within a few weeks the Board had issued its stand- 
ardized shop committee plan. Under the heading 
" Number of Committeemen " this plan declared : 

" Each department or section, of the shop shall be entitled 
to one committeeman for each hundred employees employed 
in the department or section. If, in any department or sec- 
tion, there shall be employees in excess of any even hundred, 
then an additional committeeman may be selected, provided 
the additional employees beyond the even hundred shall be 
more than fifty. If less than fifty, no additional representa- 
tive shall be allowed. As an example: in a department or 
section employing 330 men, 3 committeemen will be elected. 
In a department employing 375, 4 committeemen will be 
elected." 

In another paragraph this plan declared : 

" In order to insure workable committees of not less than 3 
or more than 5, examiners can either subdivide the plant into 
sections of not less than 250 nor more than 500 employees." 

In a memorandum of instructions issued at this time, 
the Board said that its standard plan was not intended 
to fix hard and fast rules, and that the basis of repre- 
sentation might well vary from the numbers just given. 
"No injustice results from such variations," was the 
statement, " inasmuch as these shop committees deal 
directly on behalf of their constituents with foremen 
and other representatives of the management." In 
other words, the sound principle was set forth that it is 
not at all necessary that the actual number of em- 



THE BASIS OF EEPRESENTATION 33 

ployees in each shop or district should be the same. 
Each shop is an independent political unit, so far as 
its own business is concerned, and its size should be 
determined not for numerical reasons, but in accordance 
with geographical and craft conditions. 

In applying this theory in industrial plants, however, 
it is generally found to be wise to decide on a limit, 
such as 100, as a rough basis of representation. This 
limit is not a fixed one, and the number of employees 
in a separate shop or department runs all the way from 
50 or even less to 400 or 500. 

Craft vs. Geographical Basis 

Once this flexible limit is settled, the question arises : 
What shall be the character of each unit or shop? 
Shall it be geographical or occupational, or both ? 

This is a highly important question, and there is room 
for a large variety of answers to it. From the point 
of view of some managers, an employee is an employee 
regardless of the nature of his work, and all that is 
necessary in order to give him representation is to 
allow him freely to vote for candidates taken from 
among his neighbors in the plant. The point of view 
of the average employee, on the other hand, is, that an 
employee is above everything a worker at some particular 
kind of a job, and that in order to have real repre- 
sentation he must choose a committee which has direct 
knowledge of the job. These opposite views may be 
illustrated by an actual case: 

In a certain factory it was proposed to group about 
seventy-five skilled machinists, about one hundred 
operatives on semi-skilled repetition work, and about 
one hundred and fifty construction laborers together and 
give them a shop committee. The management argued 
that all these workers were housed in the same wing 
of one building, and that a committee of three, one 



34 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

from each group, could handle their business. The 
repetition workers and the construction laborers were 
agreeable to this proposal, but the skilled machinists 
objected because they were a distinct, trained craft with 
peculiar craft problems which, they declared, could not 
well be handled by other craftsmen. In the end the 
machinists got a separate committee of their own, while 
the other two groups were consolidated into another 
single constituency. 

The problem is always a complicated one, and no hard 
and fast rule should be laid down. Perhaps the best 
general rule is that of the War Labor Board : " The 
committees shall be not only of manageable size . . . 
but shall give definite proportional representation to 
as many occupational or other natural groups, includ- 
ing women, as may be possible. . . . While it is mani- 
festly impossible for every minor occupation or minor 
department to be represented upon shop committees, it 
is possible to do justice in every case, provided the 
local situation is understood, and only when it is under- 
stood/' 

The matter of the size of the committee is not so 
difficult. The War Labor Board followed common cus- 
tom in this regard when it recommended that the com- 
mittees be not less than three nor more than five. Even 
when a shop or district contains as few as fifty em- 
ployees, a committee of three is not too large. Shop 
committee work is hard work and requires careful atten- 
tion. If less than three are chosen, the burden of repre- 
sentation will fall heavily on the one or two mem- 
bers and will require their frequent absence from 
work to make investigations and adjust cases. This 
means loss of time and often of earnings to the em- 
ployees, and a corresponding loss in production to the 
company. 

So far we have analyzed the basis of representation 



THE BASIS OF B-EPHESENTATION 35 

only as it involves the shop committees. Let us now 
look at it as it involves the general committee. 

General Committees 

A general committee is a legislative and judicial 
body which spends most of its time on appeals from 
shop committees or else on general questions which 
affect the entire plant. Since a general committee repre- 
sents the entire plant, the problem of districting so far 
as it is concerned, comes down to a single question: 
Should the members of this committee be chosen to 
represent different large sections or divisions of the 
plant, or should they be chosen from the employees 
regardless of where located ? 

As a rule there is not much difficulty in reaching a 
satisfactory decision on this point. It is obvious that 
a general committee should have general knowledge 
or experience, and it therefore usually results in prac- 
tice, no matter whether a specific rule is adopted or 
not, that the members are actually chosen from the 
different parts of the works. In Pittsfield, for example, 
the election rules required that the three main divisions 
should each choose one member of the Appeals Com- 
mittee. In Bridgeport, for another example, the Em- 
ployees General Committee is composed of the chair- 
men of all the department committees, and therefore 
automatically represents each section. 

Another and more fundamental question is, Who shall 
elect the members of the general committee, and who 
is eligible for nomination thereto? In the case of the 
shop committee, all the inhabitants of the shop, so to 
speak, elect the committee, and none but workers in 
that shop are eligible to membership. With the general 
committee a different situation arises. 

In the standard plan of the War Labor Board, the 
General Works Committee is described as being " com- 



36 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

posed of the several shop committees representing the 
departments or sections of the plant. Thus, a single 
election in a department provides both a shop committee, 
as such, and a portion of the Works Committee, which 
will be formed by the coming together of all the various 
shop committees." This theory, in other words, is that 
the shop committee is really a part of the general com- 
mittee, and that all members of the general committee 
are members of the shop committees. As we have 
seen, this theory was put into practice in the Bridge- 
port munition plants, where the general committee is 
composed of the chairmen of the shop committees. 
Thus one answer to the question put in the last par- 
agraph is that the members of the general committee 
may be elected by the shops, each shop voting separately, 
and that only shop committeemen may be eligible for 
membership on the general committee. 

But is this a satisfactory answer ? Is it a democratic 
and truly representative method of forming a govern- 
ment ? If the general committee is to be an appeals 
committee, which must necessarily be the case, should 
it be composed of employees who are members of lower 
committees, and who are therefore placed in the position 
of reviewing on appeal cases which they have already 
decided? I ask this question not because there is any 
ready-made solution for it : shop committee government 
is too new an experiment to permit dogmatism. But in 
some shop committee plans, as for example, the Lynn 
and Pittsfield plans, the members of the General Joint 
Committee on Adjustment and the Appeals Committee, 
respectively, are not members of shop committees. They 
are selected from the employees at large, and are elected 
by the members of the shop committees, who meet in 
a special convention for that purpose. None but mem- 
bers of the shop committees can nominate for members 
of the general committees. 



THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION 37 

Election Methods 

In some minds there will arise a doubt as to the 
wisdom of holding a popular election for the members 
of a general committee. If the general committee is to 
represent all the employees of the plant, however, why 
should not all the employees in the plant have the oppor- 
tunity to make nominations and to cast ballots ? Should 
this not be the case particularly where the members of 
the general committee are taken from the rank and file 
of the workers ? The issue is in reality between direct 
and indirect elections, between the original method, for 
example, of choosing a United States Senator through 
the legislature, and the present method of choosing him 
by the popular vote of his State. It may be said, 
however, that if the election rules and procedure in- 
clude the recall, the matter of voting indirectly is 
obviously of less importance than otherwise. 

Without end are the devices which have been and 
which will be suggested to secure a fair and equitable 
basis of representation of employees on shop and general 
committees. One interesting device suggested by the 
War Labor Board for the selection by a general com- 
mittee of an appeals committee is this : 

" In such balloting each General Works Committee member 
shall cast as many votes as the total number of employees 
whom he represents. Thus, if Ihere are five committeemen 
from a certain machine shop where 17,500 men are employed, 
each of the five will have a voting strength of 350; a commit- 
tee of 3 from the pattern makers' department of say 420 men 
would each have 140 votes in the General Works Committee. 
This arrangement gives fair representation all around, and 
permits the working parts of the collective bargaining ma- 
chinery, namely, the shop committees and subdivisions of the 
General Works Committee, to fit the actual departmental, craft 
or other needs which they are intended to fill." 

This suggestion brings us directly to the matter of 
the size of general committees. Custom differs accord- 



38 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

ing to the character of the general committee or com- 
mittees to be selected. In Bridgeport they vary from 
three to nine, depending on the size of the plant. 
Elsewhere, five is a common number, though it is not 
unusual to have an even number, as four or six. The 
principle to be followed is that a general committee 
must be neither too cumbersome nor too " light." It 
must not be too large to be unable to do business effi- 
ciently, and it must be large enough to be able to do 
business in the absence of two or three members. 

To sum up in outline the main points thus far covered : 

Basis of ^Representation — 

1. Shop Committees — districting. 

a. Size and location of shops. 

b. Craft or occupational character. 

c. Size of committees. 

2. General Committees. 

a. Eligibility. 

b. Direct or indirect election. 

c. Size. 

Underlying all that has been said concerning the 
basis of representation is the important fact that what 
is a fair basis of representation in one plant may be 
unfair in another. Local conditions must always be 
considered in applying general principles, and the com- 
mon mistake of trying to use a ready-made form which 
was designed to meet a different problem must be 
avoided. What will really determine the final plan of 
a system of representation will be the peculiar character 
of the industry. In a certain small factory, for example, 
there are about two hundred employees. A strict craft 
grouping of these employees suggested that there should 
be eight committees. But the fact that the entire plant 
was contained in one building resulted in a plan call- 



THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION 39 

ing for one committee of four, each member representing 
both a craft or crafts and a geographical area. 

Again, in a certain street railway organization, there 
was a natural division into five departments. These 
natural divisions, further, had branches which were 
promptly made into " shops " electing shop committee- 
men and men to serve on the department committees, 
two from each department committee later being selected 
to serve on the general committee. Here the numbers 
of the employees in the different districts was not as 
important a factor as the divisions themselves, which 
had long been in existence, ready to be adapted to the 
new purpose. 

Task of Management 

It must not be forgotten that the management has 
to perform a task of equal importance with the task 
of agreeing on a basis of representation. The em- 
ployees' side of a shop committee system is only half 
of the system, though it is the more difficult half to 
plan. The management must reorganize itself in order 
to deal with the organization of the workers. It must, 
designate its members of shop and general committees. 
Its basis of representation will largely follow that 
adopted for the employees: in the majority of cases 
it will be a combination of geographical and craft, that 
is to say, the foremen, cost clerks, leading hands, and so 
on, chosen to sit on joint shop committees or to deal 
with representatives of the workers must have direct 
knowledge of the work of the particular shop, and 
should be located in that shop. In addition, they must 
possess a large share of tact and discretion, together 
with ready willingness to "play the game" in accord- 
ance with the new rules. Adequate representation of 
management is as necessary as adequate representation 
of men. 



40 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

The districting of a plant brings to a head and focus 
all the most vital problems in shop committee govern- 
ment. A perfect basis of representation is probably an 
unattainable ideal. But a satisfactory basis of repre- 
sentation can be reached if the joint committee comes 
to the task in the right spirit and takes as its guide 
the principles which have been worked out in the labora- 
tory of experience, remembering always that, like any 
system of government, a shop committee system is sub- 
ject to change and needed revision. 



CHAPTER V 

THE LYNN PLAN 

The Lynn (Massachusetts) Works of the General Elec- 
tric Company has in operation at the present time a plan 
of representation which was worked out in joint con- 
ference between employer and employee and the writer, 
acting as administrator for the National War Labor 
Board. This plan thus far has been a pronounced 
success. A description of it with particular reference 
to the basis of representation, will serve to illustrate 
the points taken up in the last chapter. 

This plant is one of the largest of a series of more 
than a dozen factory groups located in various parts of 
the United States. It turns out a great variety of elec- 
trical apparatus, and one of the buildings at Lynn is 
the largest single building in the world devoted to the 
manufacture of electric motors. The Lynn plant has a 
ground area of 200 acres; there are 3,000,000 square 
feet of floor space, and the employees number between 
10,000 and 12,000. The trades represented include 
most of the " regular " trades, such as pattern making, 
die-cutting, skilled machine work, carpentry, blacksmith- 
ing, etc. The bulk of the work, however, is more or 
less special in its nature and there is a large amount 
of semi-skilled repetition work. 

Difficult Districting Problem 

The problem of districting the Lynn Works was 
therefore a very difficult one. Xot only was it necessary 
to give adequate representation to the " regular n trades, 



42 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

but it was also necessary to divide the works into units 
of government which would insure adequate representa- 
tion for the various groups of specialists, whether skilled, 
semi-skilled or unskilled. In spite of the fact that in 
this plant, as everywhere in the modern industrial 
world, the old craft lines had largely broken down, 
there was nevertheless a strong feeling on the part 
of considerable numbers of the employees that they 
should be represented by men who had first-hand knowl- 
edge of their particular jobs. 

At the beginning of the joint discussion the manage- 
ment presented a plan which called for one representa- 
tive for each one hundred employees, irrespective of 
occupation. At the same time the employee members 
of the committee placed their emphasis on craft repre- 
sentation for the reasons above stated. 

A building map of the works was made and used 
to guide the discussion. This map showed the location 
of each building and was supplemented by memoranda 
which set forth the nature of the work in each building 
and floor. Some idea of the task which the joint com- 
mittee performed may be gained from the fact that the 
conferences over the basis of representation alone occu- 
pied more than a week of daily sessions. 

It was first agreed that the rough numerical basis of 
representation should be 200 employees. It was next 
agreed that each group of 200, to be called a " section," 
should elect two representatives. Up to this point the 
question of the character and location of the sections or 
units had not been determined. 

Craft-geographical Basis 

With the approximate size of the sections fixed, the 
committee again consulted maps and memoranda in 
the attempt to find a common ground for agreement 
as to character and location. Hard study developed the 



THE LYNN PLAN 43 

fact that it was possible to cut the plant into sections 
varying in size from 75 to 365, with the average in 
the neighborhood of 200, and that each of these sections 
would include more or less the same kind of work and 
would, in addition, lie within convenient boundaries. 
In other words, it was found quite feasible to adopt 
what may be called the craft-geographical basis of repre- 
sentation. For example, a small building in which 116 
employees were doing machine work and assembly of a 
new type of apparatus was made into a section. The 
next section had a population of 223 employees, en- 
gaged in tool-making machine manufacture, small punch 
press and die work, and the manufacture of arc lamp 
electrodes. It was found on careful inquiry that two 
representatives could be selected from this group who 
either together or separately would have knowledge of 
the two main branches of the production. 

Another section, the first and second floors of one 
building, included 150 employees mainly engaged in 
light winding and the manufacture of meter parts. 
The cranemen, wherever located about the plant, were 
made into a separate section for wage adjustment only. 
The truck drivers and transportation men were grouped 
with the employees of the hospital and restaurant. The 
reason for this was that the transportation workers 
naturally belonged together, while the restaurant and 
hospital workers were so few in number and so mis- 
cellaneous in occupation that it did not greatly matter 
where they were placed. The groups which demanded 
craft representation were either given separate treat- 
ment or were else granted special committees for the 
adjustment of rates. For ordinary grievances they were 
to make use of the representatives of the geographical 
section in which they were employed. 

Throughout the days of these discussions, the em- 
ployee members of the committee held frequent con- 



44 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

f erences with the rank and file of the works and reported 
to the employer members the criticisms and suggestions 
thus gathered. This contact proved to be of great value 
because it took the whole plant into the discussion, and 
made it impossible for any one to charge that the plan 
was a " company plan," or something " fixed up " as 
a result of expediency or hasty compromise. 

By and large, the sections, which were the units of the 
shop committee structure, gave representation to crafts 
or to similar kinds of work. They also represented def- 
inite, compact geographical areas. 

Committee on Fair Dealing 

At this stage of the conference it became necessary 
to determine what relation the section should bear to 
the shop committee. Was the section to be considered 
as a shop, or as something entirely different? The 
agreement reached was as follows : 

" The employees' representatives of each section shall consti- 
tute a committee on fair dealing to cooperate with the man- 
agement in fostering just and harmonious relations between 
the management and employees. Any matter requiring ad- 
justment, may, in the first instance, be referred by the em- 
ployee affected either personally or with one or both of the 
representatives of his section, to the foreman of the work on 
which the employee is engaged. If the foreman fails to ad- 
just satisfactorily any matter referred to him, it shall then 
be reduced to writing and taken up by the joint shop com- 
mittee." 

In other words, the sectional committee on fair deal- 
ing was composed, so far as the employees were con- 
cerned, of two representatives plus the employee or em- 
ployees having a grievance. This committee was to 
meet with the foreman immediately in charge of the 
job, and attempt to settle the case. This committee 
was not to be a joint committee in the sense that it 
was made up of equal numbers of workers and of 



THE LYNN PLAN 45 

representatives of the management. It was the first 
step in the collective bargaining scheme. 

The next higher step, as may be gathered from the 
quotation, is the joint shop committee. 

A " shop " in the Lynn plan is a group of sections. 
The original districting of the plant called for about 
fifty sections. After the sections had been agreed to, 
it was decided to bring two, three, four or five sections 
together into other groups called " shops." The shops 
thus created contain sections in which, as far as possible, 
similar or allied manufacture is being carried on, and 
which, in addition, are located either in the same build- 
ing or in adjacent buildings. Each shop has a com- 
mittee of three employees, elected by the representatives 
of the sections of the shop from among their own num- 
ber. A total of twenty shops was established. 

Shop Committees 

Shop No. 1, for example, is composed of section 11, 
with 223 employees, located in the small buildings A, 
B, and E, plus section 41, with 116 employees, located 
in adjacent building D. Section 11 is devoted to tool- 
making machine manufacture, small punch press and 
die work, and the manufacture of small arc lamp 
electrodes. In Section 41 there is machine work and 
the assembly of new type of apparatus. Shop No. 1 
therefore has a total of 339 employees. Four repre- 
sentatives, organized into two committees on fair deal- 
ing, were to represent these two sections separately. 
The four representatives, meeting in a miniature con- 
vention, elected three of their number to serve as the 
employees' half of the joint shop committee for Shop 
No. 1. 

This system was carried out throughout the plant 
with the exception of a few special sections created 
for wage adjustment only, and with one or two shop 



46 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

committees elected, as in the case of the two power 
plants, directly by the employees themselves. 

In the Lynn scheme the shop committees are real 
joint committees — three elected representatives of the 
men and three appointed representatives of the 
management. Their duties as agreed to are to take up 
matters referred to them by the committees on fair 
dealing. 

" If the foreman," declared the agreement, " fails to adjust 
satisfactorily any matter referred to him, it shall then be 
reduced to writing and taken up by the joint shop committee. 
This committee shall endeavor finally to dispose of the matter 
and shall be at liberty to adopt such means as are necessary, 
including the calling of witnesses by either side, adequately to 
ascertain the facts and render a fair decision. Should the 
committee reach a decision satisfactory to the employee origi- 
nating the matter, or should the committee reach a unanimous 
decision on this subject, this decision shall be regarded as 
terminating the matter." 

Up to this point in the Lynn plan the representatives 
of the employees handle matters at issue in common 
counsel with the management. But just at this point 
the agreement called for a step which gave the manage- 
ment one more opportunity to secure an adjustment 
before the case went to the appeals or general commit- 
tee. " Should the committee," declared the agreement 
again, " fail satisfactorily to adjust any matter referred 
to it, a written report shall be made, together with the 
recommendations of the committee, if any, and this re- 
port shall be submitted to the department head or manu- 
facturing engineer for his action." 

It must be explained in this connection that in the 
Lynn Works officials with the title of department head 
or manufacturing engineer are in charge of large sec- 
tions of the plant, sections comprising several shops. 
The purpose of injecting these officials into the system 
at this juncture was to give the men responsible to 



THE LYNN PLAN 4? 

the manager for the conduct of these groups of shops 
a chance to review cases in which the shop committees 
reported failure to agree. It was not considered advis- 
able or necessary to make this a joint review for the 
reason, first, that it was expected that a limited number 
of cases would come up beyond the shop committees; 
and second, that so long as the employees had the right 
of appeal over the department head to the general 
committee, there could be no injustice in discontinuing 
here and here alone the joint representation. 

General Committees 

As has already been stated, the Lynn plan provided 
for general joint committees, the most important of 
which, from the point of view of the employees, was the 
general joint committee on adjustment. The original 
plan provided for a second general committee, that 
on routine, procedure and elections — in reality a rules 
committee. Subsequently, three other general commit- 
tees were authorized. 

The general joint committee on adjustment represents 
the entire works. It was elected by the representatives 
of the sections, meeting in a convention called for the 
purpose. Its members were chosen from among the 
employees at large, no representative being eligible 
thereto. The reason for this was that the committee 
was essentially a court of last appeals on which it was 
determined no one should sit who had had a direct 
interest in any case that might come before it. The 
routine, procedure and elections committee was also 
elected by the representatives, but from among their 
own number. As in the case of the shop committees, 
the management appointed an equal number of represen- 
tatives to sit with the representatives of the employees 
on the general committees. In order to secure geogra- 
phical representation, it was agreed that one of the four 



48 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

employee members of the general committee on adjust- 
ment, and one of the three employee members of the 
rules committee should be elected from the " Federal 
Street Works/' the smaller of the two groups of fac- 
tories which comprise the Lynn plant, the other mem- 
bers coming from the larger or "Kiver Works." 

This plan of representation is pictured in Chart No. 
1 on page 49. The chart was designed to show the 
"source of power" or representative character, of the 
representatives of men and management in the system. 
The chart does not show what becomes of a case in the 
event of failure of the general committee to adjust it. 
This is indicated in Chart No. 2, which shows how a 
grievance may go from the individual employee either 
directly to his foreman or through his representatives 
to his foreman; thence, if unsettled, to his shop com- 
mittee ; thence, if unsettled, to the manufacturing head ; 
thence to the general committee; and thence to the 
manager of the plant. 

The Lynn plan was the outgrowth of an award of the 
National War Labor Board. It was worked out in joint 
conference between representatives of the management, 
of the men and the Board and up to the time this book 
goes to press, still enjoys the unshaken confidence of 
the parties directly involved. Taken in connection with 
the foregoing analysis, the following summary of the 
plan tells the whole story : 

Kepresentation of Employees 

GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 
Lynn Works 
A committee of employees of the Lynn Works, and a commit- 
tee of the management, meeting under the auspices of the 
Examiner in charge of the award, have drawn up the following 
plan of shop committees. 

In order to carry out the plan, the Works have been divided 
into sections each containing, as nearly as practicable, 200 



CHART No. t 



o PLAN or REPRESENTATION o 



NoUs:-Ac£ual Sections Vary From TS-dGS* Shops composed of from. £~5 Sections each oTctal 

*<r>S/ 



number oi Sections 57** Shops SO 



Employees 



z 

*" foretentotives 



Each 
Section 
ofApprcx- 

imately < 

200 
Employees 



Hepnuniatnys 



2 

Repretentatiyes 



\-fk-- 

tewmtiee 



-CIZF 



/^General [""•v 

/ Joint \ 

•i 40ommittaa4!\ 

\A\tjvstEiehtr 



Committee 



c 



Monagsmmt 

| Foreman J " 

'WMla GEES r 



Elections 



Joint 
^Oomtai/tee-^ 

J Re\iabilitJtion\ 
\3 I c/ J/ 



vmditi 



\For email f ~ 




IZ=> 



ZJ 



ancf 
Sailors 



ffonage- 
zaent 



I 



CHART No. ^ 



o Route of an Issue * 




Representatives 



?epresentt 



Chart Illustrating Lynn Plan. (See page 48.) 
49 



50 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

employees. These sections have been grouped into " shops " 
representing manufacturing groups of similar or allied manu- 
factures. 

Except for certain special sections, each section is entitled 
to two employees' representatives, to be selected by secret 
ballot from the employees in the section. 

Not less than 30 days before the second general election and 
all subsequent general elections, the Joint Committee on Rou- 
tine, Procedure and Elections, hereinafter provided for, shall 
review the division of the Works into sections and " shops " 
and shall make any changes which may be necessary to carry 
out the principles laid down in the plan. 

TERMS OF REPRESENTATION 

(1) Elections of representatives shall be held semi-an- 
nually. 

(2) One-half the number of representatives shall be 
elected at each semi-annual election. 

(3) The term of office of a representative shall be one 
year; provided, however, that in the case of the rep- 
resentative chosen at the first elections, one repre- 
sentative from each section shall be retired by lot at 
the next ensuing election. 

(4) Retiring representatives, and representatives whose 
terms of office have expired, shall be eligible for re- 
election. 

(5) Any representative may be recalled on written request 
of two-thirds of the employees qualified to vote in the 
section in which he has been elected. 

(6) Any representative shall be deemed to have vacated 
his office upon ceasing to be an employee of the Com- 
pany. 

(7) Vacancies in the office of representative occurring 
from any cause shall be filled, for the unexpired term, 
by a special election to be conducted forthwith, in 
the section where the vacancy occurs, and in a man- 
ner similar to that of the general elections. 

(8) In case any representative is incapacitated, a tem- 
porary representative, to replace him during such 
incapacity only, may be elected on the written request 
of two-thirds of the employees qualified to vote in the 
section in which the incapacitated representative was 
elected. In such case a special election shall be con- 
ducted in the section in a manner similar to that of 
the general election. 



THE LYNN PLAN 51 

Employees must possess all the qualifications herein enu- 
merated in order to be eligible to hold office as representatives 
or committeemen: 

(1) Employees who have been in the Lynn Works for 
one year. 

(2) Employees who are American citizens, or who have 
taken out their first papers. 

(3) Employees who are able to read and write the Eng- 
lish language. 

(4) Employees of Apprentice Departments, eighteen years 
of age or over, who fulfill the above qualifications. 

(5) Employees of other departments twenty-one years of 
age or over. 

(6) No foreman or leading hand. 

(7) No alien enemy. 

The following classes are eligible to vote: 

(1) Every employee in the Lynn Works, except foremen 
and leading hands, regardless of age or term of 
service. 

(2) After the first election only employees who have been 
in the Lynn Works for a period of three months prior 
to the election shall be entitled to vote. 

METHOD OF CONDUCTING ELECTIONS 

The first election shall be conducted according to a method 
prescribed by the National War Labor Board. 

Succeeding elections shall be conducted according to a 
method to be determined by the Joint Committee on Routine, 
Procedure and Elections. This committee shall undertake the 
determination of these questions at least sixty days before each 
general election. 

ORGANIZATION OF COMMITTEES 

Immediately after the result of a general election has been 
announced all the representatives elected at the River Works 
shall meet, select a presiding officer and a secretary and pro- 
ceed to elect three employees to serve as members of the Gen- 
eral Joint Committee on Adjustment. In a similar manner all 
the representatives elected from the Federal Street (West 
Lynn) W^orks shall meet and elect one member of this com- 
mittee. 

Members of the General Committee may be selected from the 



53 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

employees at large, or from duly elected representatives of 
sections. If an elected representative be chosen to serve on the 
General Committee, his office as representative shall be de- 
clared vacant and a new election shall be held to choose his 
successor. 

The representatives of the River Works shall elect from 
their number, at the same time, two members of the Joint 
Committee on Routine, Procedure and Elections; and the rep- 
resentatives at Federal Street (West Lynn) shall elect one 
member of this committee. 

As soon as possible after the announcement of these elec- 
tions the representatives elected for each " Shop " shall meet 
and elect from among their number three members of the Joint 
Shop Committee for that Shop. 

Representatives may serve on one Joint Committee only. 

The result of the first election will be recorded by the Ex- 
aminer in charge of the administration of the award of the 
War Labor Board. The result of subsequent elections shall 
be reported to the Management in writing, signed in case of 
members of the General Committee by the presiding officer and 
secretary, and in case of members of the Joint Shop Commit- 
tee, by all the representatives taking part in the Election. 

The management shall appoint to each Joint Committee as 
many members as there are employees' representatives, but 
no more. 

JOINT COMMITTEES 

The following Joint Committees are constituted under this 
plan: 

1. Joint Committee on Routine, Procedure and Elections. 

2. General Joint Committee on Adjustment. 

3. Joint Shop Committees. 

JOINT COMMITTEE ON ROUTINE, PROCEDURE AND ELECTIONS 

The Joint Committee on Routine, Procedure and Elections 
shall have charge of all matters relating to dates and hours 
of meetings of all Joint Committees, the regulation of their 
methods of procedure, but not of the action taken by them, of 
the routine of procedure in matters requiring adjustment, and 
of all matters relating to elections, including all controversies 
concerning the fairness of an election. 

PROCEDURE IN MATTERS REQUIRING ADJUSTMENT 

1. Committee on Fair Dealing: 

The employees' representatives of each section shall 
constitute a Committee on Fair Dealing to cooperate 



THE LYNN PLAN 53 

with the Management in fostering just and harmonious 
relations between the Management and employees. 

2. Reference to Foreman: 

Any matter requiring adjustment, may in the first 
instance, be referred by the employee affected either per- 
sonally or with one or both of the representatives of 
his section, to the foreman of the work on which the 
employee is engaged. 

3. Reference to the Joint Shop Committee: 

If the foreman fails to adjust satisfactorily any mat- 
ter referred to him, it shall then be reduced to writing 
and taken up by the Joint Shop Committee. This Com- 
mittee shall endeavor finally to dispose of the matter 
and shall be at liberty to adopt such means as are 
necessary, including the calling of witnesses by either 
side, adequately to ascertain the facts and render a 
fair decision. Should the Committee reach a decision 
satisfactory to the employee originating the matter, or 1 
should the Committee reach a unanimous decision on 
the subject, this decision shall be regarded as terminat- 
ing the matter. 

4. Reference to the Manufacturing Engineer or Depart- 

ment Head: 

Should the Committee fail satisfactorily to adjust 
a matter referred to it, a written report shall be made, 
together with the recommendations of the Committee, 
if any, and this report shall be submitted to the depart- 
ment head or manufacturing engineer for his action. 

5. References to the General Joint Committee on Adjust- 

ment: 
Should the Manufacturing Engineer fail to adjust 
satisfactorily any matter referred to him, the question 
may then be referred to the General Joint Committee 
on Adjustment for action and report thereon to the 
Management. Should the Committee reach a decision 
on any matter referred to it which is satisfactory to 
the employee or employees originating the matter, or 
should the decision of the Committee on the question 
be unanimous, this decision shall terminate the mat- 
ter. In case the Committee fails to reach a decision 
under the preceding provisions, it shall be referred to 
the Manager. 



54 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 



RECORDS OF COMMITTEE MEETINGS 

Every Joint Committee shall keep accurate records of its 
proceedings. 

MANAGER'S REPRESENTATIVE 

The Manager may appoint an industrial representative to 
facilitate close relationship between the Management and the 
representatives, and at any stage in the program of proceed- 
ings the Manager's representative may be called in to exercise 
his good offices. He may attend any meeting but shall have 
no vote. 

DISCRIMINATION 

There shall be no discrimination either on the part of the 
employees or the Management in respect to race, creed, society, 
fraternity or union. 

ACCOMMODATION 

The Management shall provide a suitable place for meetings 
and defray such expenses as are necessarily incidental to the 
activities herein provided for. 

AMENDMENTS 

Any course of procedure herein provided for may be amended 
by unanimous vote of the Joint Committee on Routine, Pro- 
cedure and Elections. 

Under the award of the War Labor Board, the Lynn 
shop committees were ordered to review the wage scale 
from top to bottom and make it comparable with the 
wage scale of the Schenectady Works of the General 
Electric Company. The performance of this task was 
a severe test of the new system, but the test was met 
successfully. For this reason, and because, further, the 
Lynn plan appears to be based on fundamentally sound 
principles, it is commended to the study of all who are 
interested in the shop committee movement. 



CHAPTER VI 

THREE CHARACTERISTIC PLANS 

The Lynn plan, described in the last chapter, shows 
how a shop committee system can be built into and 
fitted to the particular and special needs of a very large 
and complex industry. The apparent elaborateness of 
the Lynn plan was necessary because of the elaborate- 
ness of the manufacture in the Lynn plant. But the 
shop committee idea is nevertheless equally adaptable to 
smaller and simpler industries, as well as to even larger 
and more involved industrial situations. 

The shop committee system established at the Pitts- 
field Machine and Tool Company, Pittsfield, Mass., has 
already been mentioned. It is worth further attention 
at this point because it is an illustration of the adapta- 
tion of the shop committee to a small factory. 

In the fall of 1918 this factory employed, in round 
numbers, one hundred men and women. The men, who 
were in the majority, were skilled machinists, tool- 
makers, " specialists " on machine work, laborers and 
apprentices. The girls were doing semi-skilled work, 
chiefly the winding of wire. The plant was comprised 
in a single building. 

For some weeks prior to the installation of the shop 
committee system, the men had been joining the union. 
Inasmuch as this was during the war, they realized 
that they could not force recognition of the union and 
a reversal of the company's policy of maintaining an 
open shop. The company, on the other hand, made 
no objection to the union activities of the men, and 

55 



56 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

was always ready to meet with them, either individually 
or collectively. Both sides favored the shop committee 
as a happy solution of their common difficulties. 

At a joint conference held in the manager's office 
a plan for a shop committee system was drawn up and 
agreed to. In view of the small size of the plant it 
was decided that a single committee could adequately 
represent the entire works. The women were offered 
representation on the committee, but declined. Elec- 
tion rules and procedure were drafted on the basis of 
similar rules and procedure in other plants (see Chapter 
VII). The election was held toward the end of the 
working day later in the week of the conference. 

A Simple Problem 

So small was this plant that the vexatious problem 
of the basis of representation practically settled itself. 
The workers naturally desired to choose committeemen 
who were acquainted with the different operations in the 
shop, and no formal districting was necessary. Nor was 
it necessary to establish more than one committee, the 
small size making it possible for a single committee 
to serve both as a mediating and as a judicial body. 
The principal value of the installation of this system 
was, first, that it organized a local industrial government 
for the plant in which every employee, regardless of 
outside affiliation, had equal voice. Second, it guaran- 
teed to the management that when the duly elected 
committee requested a conference, the matter to be con- 
sidered was one of interest to the entire body of em- 
ployees. Third, it brought about a permanent means 
of maintaining between men and management the good 
relations of the past which rapidly changing conditions 
in the industrial world at times threatened to disrupt. 

In sharp contrast to this one-committee shop com- 
mittee system is the so-called cooperative plan of the 



THEEE CHAKACTERISTIC PLANS 57 

Philadelphia Eapid Transit Company. This plan is 
interesting because it shows that the shop committee 
form of government can be successfully applied to the 
transportation industry. It is also interesting because 
it shows how a shop committee system can be grafted, 
so to speak, onto a Welfare Association, thus bringing 
it up to date and rendering it capable of meeting modern 
demands. 

The Philadelphia Plan 

The Philadelphia plan was developed in 1918 as a 
result of a joint conference between men and manage- 
ment. The first elections were supervised by the Na- 
tional War Labor Board. The history x of this plan, 
while of great significance, need not be recounted here 
beyond saying that the basis of it was a Cooperative 
Welfare Association established in 1911 at a time when 
the company faced a serious financial crisis. The pur- 
pose of the Cooperative Welfare Association was similar 
to that of a shop committee system, namely, to create 
and maintain mutually satisfactory relations on the 
theory that such relations both served the public and 
secured the investments of stockholders. 

When the shop committee system was established, the 
Philadelphia Eapid Transit Company employed nearly 
10,000 workers. Through the welfare organization men 
and management had come into close contact, wages had 
been adjusted, sick and death benefits had been assured, 
and working conditions had been improved. The wel- 
fare association alone failed to provide an organization 
sufficiently complete and effective for all the needs of 
genuine collective bargaining. The new plan broadened 
and enlarged certain features of the old plan, and pro- 

i See pamphlet entitled " A Plan for Collective Bargaining 
and Cooperative Welfare," published in 1918 by the Philadel- 
phia Rapid Transit Co. 



58 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

vided a system of adjustment entirely separate and dis- 
tinct from the cooperative welfare work. This separa- 
tion is well worth noting. 

Districting the Railroad Organization 

The first task was the districting of the industry. 
Study of this problem soon developed the fact that the 
unit of representation was already in existence, namely, 
the depots, the stations and the divisions of the road. 
The industry was already further grouped into five 
departments, each of which included a number of units : 
the transportation department, the rolling stock and 
buildings department, the electrical department, the way 
department, and the general office department. No new 
or artificial sectioning was here necessary, as in the 
case of the Lynn plan. While the number of employees 
in the different depots, stations and divisions varied 
within considerable limits, the fact that a given unit 
contained, broadly speaking, similar crafts or occupa- 
tions and was also bounded by well defined geographical 
lines, fulfilled the general principles of representation 
discussed in Chapter IV. 

Each depot, station or division under the plan was 
allowed two representatives, or " branch committee- 
men," who were elected by the workers in the customary 
fashion. 

Each department was given a committee, composed 
of all the branch committeemen or representatives 
elected in that particular department. 

Each department committee elected two of its mem- 
bers to serve on the general committee. 

The management appointed an equal number of 
representatives to meet jointly with the branch, depart- 
ment and general committees. 

The skeleton or framework of the Philadelphia sys- 
tem is quite similar to that of the Lynn system. The 



CHART OF ORGANIZATION 



THE COMPANY 



THE EMPLOYER 



| THE EMPLOYE [ 



BRANCH 
COMMITTEES 



BRANCH 
COMMITTEES 



DEPARTMENT 
COMMITTEES 



DEPARTMENT 
COMMITTEES 



GENERAL 
COMMITTEE 



GENERAL 
COMMITTEE 



COOPERATIVE COUNCIL 

COOPERATIVE 
WELFARE ASSOCIATION 




ARBITRATOR 



ARBITRATION 
THROUGH THE PUBLIC 



PROVOST 
Y OF PENNSYLVANIA 
REPRESENTING 

EDUCATION 



CHAIRMAN 

PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION 

REPRESENTING 

SERVICE 




PRESIDENT 
CHAMBER OF C 

REPRESENTING 

COMMERCE 



Chabt Illustrating Philadelphia Plan. (See page 60.) 

59 



60 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

branch committeemen correspond to the representatives 
in the Lynn system; the department committees corre- 
spond to the shop committees ; and the general commit- 
tees in both systems, though elected somewhat differ- 
ently, are essentially alike in purpose, make-up and 
function. 

Arbitration Provision 

The Philadelphia plan further contained a provision 
for arbitration which in one form or another should be 
an essential part of every shop committee system. The 
scheme as set forth appears to be both ingenious and 
practicable : 

" If resort to arbitration becomes necessary, then there shall 
be an arbitrator chosen by the general committee for em- 
ployees and an arbitrator chosen by the general committee for 
employer; the two arbitrators so chosen to select a third arbi- 
trator. Failing unanimous decision, the decision of any two 
of these arbitrators shall be binding. 

" In the event that the arbitrators chosen by the general 
committee for employees and the arbitrator chosen by the gen- 
eral committee for employer are unable to agree upon a third 
arbitrator, then the provost of the University of Pennsylvania, 
the chairman of the Public Service Commission, and the Presi- 
dent of the Chamber of Commerce shall be requested to serve 
as additional arbitrators, or, failing so to do, to appoint their 
own personal representatives to act as such additional arbi- 
trators. Failing unanimous decision, the decision of any three 
of these five arbitrators shall be binding." 

The chart on page 59 indicates the reason for the se- 
lection of the additional arbitrators, and also puts in 
graphic form the scheme of representation. 

The Bridgeport Plan 

Far more difficult of organization than either the 
Lynn, Pittsfield or the Philadelphia systems was that 
which was worked out for the Bridgeport, Connecticut, 
munitions plants in the summer and fall of 1918. 



THREE CHARACTERISTIC PLANS 61 

Sixty-two separate plants were involved, and the em- 
ployees affected numbered between fifty and sixty thou- 
sand. The production of these factories was almost 
entirely for the war purposes of the United States Gov- 
ernment. It is not necessary to recount here the history 
of the stormy events which menaced not only the local 
peace of Bridgeport itself, but imperiled the success of 
the allied armies, which depended to a large extent on 
Bridgeport for the manufacture of ammunition for rifles 
and machine guns. Had the Union Metallic Cartridge 
Company alone closed down at this time it is well within 
the truth to say that the United States could not have 
proceeded with the final push which ended the war in 
November. 

The problem of securing agreements between the em- 
ployers and employees involved in the Bridgeport sit- 
uation was, therefore, complicated by many grave consid- 
erations. For the very reasons above indicated the 
speedy establishment of a workable shop committee sys- 
tem was a prime national necessity. 

The Bridgeport plan is essentially very simple. Its 
main features are : 

1. Employees' department committees of three, " one 
committee for each group of workers under a foreman 
or f orelady." 

2. Employees' general committee for each plant, com- 
posed either of the chairmen of the department com- 
mittees, or an executive committee elected by these chair- 
men. 

3. Representatives of the management appointed to 
deal with the employee committees. 

4. A local joint board of mediation and conciliation, 
composed of three representatives of employees and 
three of manufacturers. 



62 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

Committee Functions 

Under this plan the problem of districting is solved 
almost automatically. By considering each group un- 
der a foreman as the unit of government, complete 
craft or occupational representation is assured, and geo- 
graphical representation takes care of itself. The com- 
mittees of three elected to represent the various groups 
or shops have two functions: first, the function of at- 
tempting to secure adjustments with the foremen; and, 
second, the function of meeting with the management 
on cases in which settlement with the foreman has failed. 
The general committee for each plant at Bridgeport sits 
in joint conference with the management to review all 
cases and matters not settled between the department 
committees and the management. In addition, the 
general committee serves as a rules or election commit- 
tee. The local board of mediation and conciliation has 
the function of representing the entire body of em- 
ployees and manufacturers in the Bridgeport plants 
coming under the scope of the plan. 

The method of procedure under this simple machin- 
ery of adjustment was worked out in great detail and 
has been proved by experience to be entirely practicable. 
The power and functions of each set of committees, as 
well as the method of procedure was made the subject 
of a signed agreement 1 which has every appearance 
of leaving no excuse or loophole for evading the princi- 
ples of the covenant thus created. In the chapter on 
Procedure some of the provisions of the Bridgeport shop 
committee system are quite fully discussed, but it is 
well to emphasize here also the value of having regula- 
tions so carefully drawn that there can not be the slight- 

i " Organization and By-Laws for Collective Bargaining Com- 
mittees, instituted by the National War Labor Board for 
Bridgeport, Conn." 



THEEE CHAEACTEEISTIC PLANS 63 

est misunderstanding of the way in which the system is 
intended to work. 

The Bridgeport plan is worth more extended analysis 
than can be given it in these necessarily brief pages. 
Eemarkably complete in structure, it is nevertheless 
easy of operation and certainly as democratic in prin- 
ciples as other systems established during the same pe- 
riod. 

Judging by the evidence afforded by the Pittsfield, 
Philadelphia and Bridgeport shop committee plans, the 
shop committee theory is capable of adaptation to very 
small plants, to peculiar industries like transportation, 
and to groups of plants in which similar or allied man- 
ufacture is being carried on. Are we not justified in 
drawing the further conclusion that the shop commit- 
tee is a device in industrial government which, if prop- 
erly shaped to the special or local end in view is of uni- 
versal application? 



CHAPTER VII 

ELECTION MACHINERY 

Enough has been said in the preceding chapters to give 
a fair idea of the general principles of shop committee 
government as well as of the practical application of 
these principles. We now come logically to the question 
of the election machinery; in other words, to a discus- 
sion of the detailed methods of supervising and hold- 
ing elections. 

It should go without saying that the first essential 
requirement is that the elections should be absolutely 
fair and aboveboard. Since the object of the elections 
is to choose representatives of the employees, it follows 
that the elections are, above all else, employees' elec- 
tions. That is to say, none but employees may nominate, 
vote and address the meetings. All employees, there- 
fore, must be on equal terms at the elections : the ballot- 
ing should be secret, there should be no " lobbying " at 
or near the polls, and the customary restrictions to 
guard against fraud and cheating must be enforced. 

But while the management is not directly concerned 
in the elections, it has the right to demand that the 
elections be fair, that none but employees participate, 
and that no employee, regardless of his union affilia- 
tion or lack of union affiliation, be discriminated against. 
If the elections are " straight," the management is 
bound to recognize and deal with the committees. If 
there is any question about the character of the elec- 
tions, the management is correct in withholding recog- 

64 



ELECTION MACHINERY 65 

nition till it can be satisfied that all was as it should 
have been. 

For these reasons it is desirable that the election 
rules should be worked out in joint conference by em- 
ployer and employee. After the rules have been worked 
out and proper means adopted for impartial super- 
vision of the elections, the management should main- 
tain a strict policy of hands off. 

Such a policy and such impartial supervision was 
required by the Xational War Labor Board. Wherever 
shop committee elections were held under an award 
of this body, the administrative examiner, or some 
one selected by him, was charged with the duty of 
running the elections. In the future many shop 
committee systems will doubtless be installed out- 
side of any governmental jurisdiction whatever, and 
a wise plan of procedure would be for employer and 
employee to agree on some disinterested outsider to 
take charge of the elections. In this way all danger 
from alleged influence on the part of the management 
or of the unions can be avoided. 

]Yhere To Hold Elections 

Where should shop committee elections be held? In 
the early days of the development of shop commit- 
tee systems this question caused considerable difficulty. 
Practically all employers have advocated the holding 
of elections within the plant or shop itself on the ground 
that an election is purely a plant or shop matter. 
Practically all representatives of labor, on the other 
hand, have advocated the holding of elections outside 
the plant on the ground that the committees are com- 
mittees of the employees and that the employees should 
be free to select them where and as they choose. 

As was brought out in Chapter II, the War Labor 
Board in the Pittsfield General Electric award decided 



66 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

that the elections should be held on the neutral soil 
of a public building, thus giving neither side a real 
or imaginary advantage of place. In later awards the 
practice was to hold the elections within the plant, 
of course under government supervision, with the quali- 
fication, however, that the election should be conducted 
" where the largest total vote of the men can be secured, 
consistent with fairness of count and full and free ex- 
pression of choice, either in the shop or in some con- 
venient public building." 

Looking at the question of place from the point of 
view thus set forth, it will generally be agreed that 
the largest total vote can be secured in the plant rather 
than outside the plant. This is borne out by experi- 
ence. In Pittsfield again, for example, the elections 
were held outside the plant and necessarily outside 
regular working hours. Many employees naturally de- 
sired to get home as soon as possible after the whistle 
blew, and the desire not to come out in the evening also 
kept many away from the polls when the schedule called 
for elections at 6, 7, 8 or 9 o'clock. As a matter of fact, 
probably less than 75% of the Pittsfield employees 
voted — a large percentage when compared with the 
vote cast at the average municipal election, but not as 
large as the record made at the Lynn and Bridgeport 
elections held in the plant, where the figure ranged from 
80 to 100% of those eligible to vote. Elections held 
in the plant, moreover, can be run off in less time than 
outside; the workers are relatively near any room or 
building chosen for the purpose, and it is possible to 
have the voting done during the working day. Under 
an honest supervising officer and with a management 
acting in good faith, elections can be held in the shop 
" consistent with fairness of count and full and free 
expression of choice." As a matter of efficiency, then, 



ELECTION MACHINERY 67 

and wholly aside from the question of the right of 
workers to do their own choosing of their own repre- 
sentatives when and where they wish, the factory seems 
to be the best place in which to conduct the voting. 

The Labor Side of It 

The argument of those labor leaders who contend 
that elections should be held outside the plant has 
already been stated in part. To what has been said 
this further argument should be added: that the em- 
ployees have nothing to say as to the place where the 
management chooses its representatives, nor as to 
whether outside influences, such as employers' associa- 
tions, are consulted in the selection; that, in other 
words, each side should be allowed to use its own judg- 
ment and to follow its own desires in selecting its own 
committee members. 

This argument loses sight of the fact that in the 
majority of instances the management of a plant con- 
ducts its own business within the four walls of the plant, 
but in spite of this oversight, there is much sound com- 
mon sense in this point of view. The right of workers 
to bargain collectively through their chosen representa- 
tives has been upheld by the United States Government, 
and it would seem that this right carries with it the 
right of selecting the locality where representatives are 
to be chosen. On the broad grounds of principle, there 
seems to be every reason to permit employees to vote 
where they please, provided they can give to the manage- 
ment satisfactory guarantees that the voting was open 
to all employees and was, in addition, fair and unin- 
fluenced. As a general matter of expediency, however, 
experience in holding elections goes to show that the 
factory itself is by far the better place. Frank dis- 
cussion of these points on the part of employer and 



68 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

employee will usually bring about a satisfactory and 
unanimous agreement. 

Elections In the Plant 

Whereabouts in the plant should elections be held? 

There are two possible answers to this question. One 
is to decree that the elections shall be held in some 
central building in the plant; the other is to hold them 
in the actual shop where the employees eligible to vote 
at any particular election are at work. In the first 
case it is necessary for the employees to leave their 
benches for a period of from fifteen minutes to three- 
quarters of an hour. In the second case, either the 
work may be stopped and the election held in some open 
portion of the shop, or the ballot box may be carried 
around to the employees. Thus there are three different 
methods of conducting the elections, each one of which 
has been successfully used. 

The practice of carrying the ballot box around to 
the voters is the most economical of the time of the 
voters. The election officials merely go to the man at 
his bench or machine, hand him a ballot, read or show 
him the list of nominations, if any, and receive his 
marked ballot in the sealed box. In plants where this 
method has been employed, a shop or section of 100 
has been voted in approximately half an hour with a 
loss of time to the individual employee of a very few 
minutes. The disadvantages of this method are, first, 
that it requires more labor on the part of the super- 
visor; second, that it fails to give an opportunity for 
a convention or meeting at which nominations may be 
made and the purpose and details of the election ex- 
plained; and third, that the noise of the machinery is 
likely to add confusion and to encourage misunder- 
standing. 

Where, on the other hand, the election is held in an 



ELECTION MACHINERY 69 

open space on the floor of the shop, the disadvantages 
just mentioned are done away with. Such an election, 
however, requires a general cessation of work, including 
the stopping of machines, and occupies ten or fifteen 
minutes of the time of each worker. The advantages 
are, first, that it requires less of the time of the super- 
visor; second, that it brings the employees together 
as a shop or group for the purpose of making nomina- 
tions and so on ; and third, that with quiet in the room, 
the chance of misunderstanding and error is reduced. 
These same advantages apply to the method of hold- 
ing elections in a central place in the plant. When 
such a place is chosen, it is equipped with semi-per- 
manent entrances and exits and booths, and provided 
also with tables, chairs, and a blackboard. Each elec- 
tion is preceded by a short convention at which the 
supervising officer in the chair calls the meeting to order, 
explains its purpose, answers questions, receives nomina- 
tions, etc. This method has the additional advantage 
that one set of election officers can handle the check- 
ing of voters, the counting of the ballots, and the writ- 
ing of election reports, thus insuring uniformity of 
practice and speed. In practice it has been found that 
it is easily possible to run off a section of as many as 
300 within half an hour under one supervisor. In a 
certain plant employing 10,000 workers where this 
method was used, the elections of all the sectional, shop 
and general committees were completed in five and one- 
half days, under the supervision of two men. In a 
plant of approximately the same size where the ballot 
box was carried around, six supervisors were required to 
do the work in the same time. 

Election Rules 

But regardless of the method of election, and regard- 
less also of the place where the election is held, there 



70 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

are certain practices which should be common to every 
well managed shop committee election. Foremost 
among these is the drafting of a set of election rules 
covering such questions as term of office, eligibility 
both for nomination and for voting, method of mak- 
ing nominations, method of deciding who is elected, 
method of checking the voters, and important items 
such as the referendum and the recall. These regula- 
tions should be drawn up by the joint election com- 
mittee, and should be posted throughout the plant several 
days before the election. The execution of these regula- 
tions should be left to the supervisor, assisted by the 
employee members of the election committee. 

A typical set of election rules, based on actual experi- 
ence, is as follows: 

ELECTION REGULATIONS 

Eligibility 

The following classes of employees are eligible to vote: 

1. Every employee in the Works, except foremen and 

leading hands, regardless of age or term of service. 

2. After the first election only employees who have been 

in the Works for a period of three months prior 

to the election shall be entitled to vote. 

In order to hold office employees must meet the following 
qualifications : 

1. Continuous employment in the Works for one year. 

2. Must be American citizen, or have taken out first 
papers. 

3. Must be able to read and write the English language. 

4. Must be 21 years of age or over. 

5. Must not be foreman, leading hand, or employed in su- 
pervising capacity. 

Terms of Representation 

1. Elections shall be held annually. 

2. Any committeeman may be recalled at a special election 
requested on petition of 20% of his constituents, two- 
thirds voting in favor of recall prevailing at such spe- 
cial election. 



ELECTION MACHINERY 71 

3. A committeeman ceasing to be an employee of the 

Works shall be deemed to have resigned his office. 

4. Vacancies in the office of any committeeman shall be 
filled, for the unexpired term, by a special election con- 
ducted by the Elections Committee in such manner as 
it shall order. 

5. In case any committeeman is incapacitated, a tem- 
porary committeeman may be elected on petition of 
two-thirds of the employees of his shop. 

Procedure at Elections 

1. Upon arriving at the election hall, each employee will 
give his name and clock number to the checker at the 
gate, and will then be furnished with a ballot. 

2. When the employees in each shop are fully assembled, 
the supervisor of elections will call the meeting to order 
and ask for nominations. Each shop will elect three 
committeemen, but there is no limit to the number who 
may be nominated. 

3. The names of the nominees will be written on a black- 
board, and the employees will proceed to the booths 
and write their ballots. 

4. Ballots containing more names than the shop is entitled 
to elect will be thrown out. Ballots containing only 
one name will be counted. 

5. The candidates receiving the highest number of votes 
will be declared elected. 

These regulations are not intended to be complete, 
but rather to suggest the points which ought to be 
covered. Differing local conditions will require special 
treatment and variation from the methods here outlined. 
In some plants a bi-annual election is better than an 
annual election. Again, in some shop committee sys- 
tems it has been found desirable to declare the candi- 
date receiving the highest number of votes in any shop 
election, the chairman of the shop committee. 

Ballots, Booths, etc. 

Ballots for the voting should be cards or slips of 
paper of convenient size with a notice, such as, " Vote 
for Three," " Vote for Two Only," or " Fold Here," 



72 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

printed on the face. The ballot boxes should be large 
enough to hold all the votes cast in any one election; 
the slot should be in the top, and the box should be 
sealed by and left in the custody of the election officers. 
After counting the ballots, provision should be made 
to preserve the ballots for a stated period in case of a 
demand for a recount. The record of each election 
should be made in duplicate or triplicate on a blank 
prepared for the purpose and should show : the name or 
number of the shop or section, the date and hour of 
the election, the candidates nominated and the votes 
received by each, the number of voters checked in, 
and the total number of votes cast. After being signed 
by the tellers and countersigned by the supervisor of 
elections, one copy of this record should be filed with 
the management, another with the employees' com- 
mittee, and a third with the joint election committee. 
The booths may be extemporized from packing boxes, 
mounted on work benches. 

A word should now be said about the important mat- 
ter of checking the voters. Probably the most conven- 
ient method is to use the company payroll, rearranged 
if necessary, in order to include on one sheet or set 
of sheets the names of the employees of each section 
or shop eligible to vote. These lists should be pre- 
pared and posted a few days in advance of the election 
so as to permit the correction of errors. As each 
employee comes to the gate, he should be checked in 
by a clerk of the committee. In some plants a clerk 
from the particular shop or section pay office stands 
outside the election hall to identify the voters, thus giv- 
ing the management an assurance which it has the 
right to demand. Other ways of insuring purity of 
elections will readily present themselves. 

The creation of a regular or standing general joint 
committee on rules is usually advisable. Such a com- 



ELECTION MACHINERY 73 

mittee should keep the records of the elections, should 
make and revise the election rules, should conduct the 
elections, including bye-elections to fill vacancies, and 
may in addition be charged with the duty of redisrict- 
ing the plant from time to time as the working of the 
system or the creation of new or the abolition of old 
sections requires. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PROCEDURE 

If we can call the joint agreement on which a shop 
committee system is based the constitution of the indus- 
trial government of the plant, we may say that the 
rules of procedure for the system are the laws which 
apply the principles of the constitution. Smooth and 
orderly working of a shop committee system can not 
be obtained unless such laws are first carefully formu- 
lated and then rigidly enforced. 

We have seen in previous chapters that the general 
method of procedure in a shop committee system is 
for the grievance or matter at issue to be referred by 
the individual employee first to his representative or 
committeeman; that such representative or committee- 
man next takes the case up with the foreman, and, 
failing settlement, with the joint shop committee; that 
the shop committee, if unable to agree, refers it on up 
through the regular system till it reaches the manager 
or, in rare instances, outside arbitration. But in order 
to guide the business of these various representatives 
and committees it is necessary to lay down in some 
detail and with full consideration by both sides certain 
specific rules of procedure. These rules will naturally 
vary according to the situation, but in all plants we find 
that many of the problems are the same and that the 
same or similar rules will apply. 

Practical experience tends to show that a complete 
set of rules of procedure can not be laid down in ad- 
vance of the establishment of a shop committee system. 
Nevertheless a beginning must be made, and in all 

74 



"PROCEDURE 75 

probability the best plan is for the joint committee of 
men and management having charge of the development 
of the system to agree on a set of temporary rules of 
procedure which may later be revised and perfected 
by the general joint committee on rules. 

It is essential above all that the rules of procedure 
should be uniform throughout the plant, and the in- 
dividual shop committees should not insist on consider- 
ing themselves as independent of the rest of the sys- 
tem. In order, however, to avoid the possible danger 
of establishing an undemocratic set of regulations and 
of denying a minority its rights, provision should be 
made for a popular referendum on rules and procedure 
whenever a certain percentage of the rank and file de- 
mand it. Abuses will creep into the best systems of 
government, and the only adequate remedy for abuses 
is frank and free discussion and full opportunity for 
amendment. But the routine work of making and en- 
forcing rules should be left to the rules committee to 
which should be given jurisdiction over the entire fac- 
tory. 

Among the subjects which rules of procedure should 
cover are : 

Time and place of meetings. 

Records of meetings. 

Method of arriving at committee decisions. 

Method of investigating cases. 

Compensation for committee service. 

A typical set of rules for joint shop committee meet- 
ings is the following: 

PROCEDURE OF SHOP COMMITTEES 

1. All meetings shall be held at 5 P. M. 

2. A shop committee meeting falling on a holiday shall b% 
held at 5 P. M. on the working afternoon next following. 



76 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

3. Shop committee meetings shall be held in accordance with 
the schedule prepared by the rules committee. Special meet- 
ings of shop committees may be called at the request of one 
member, made to two members of the rules committee, an 
employee member and a management member, who shall decide 
on the request as speedily as possible. Meetings shall be called 
to order, minutes of preceding meeting read and approved and, 
in the event that no business is presented, immediate adjourn- 
ment is in order. 

4. The members of each joint shop committee shall serve as 
chairman in alphabetical rotation. The chairman may par- 
ticipate in the discussion and may vote as a member of the 
committee. 

5. Each committee shall choose a permanent secretary from 
among its members. The secretary shall keep the records as 
hereinafter specified. The secretary may serve as chairman. 

6. The secretary of the shop committee shall keep the min- 
utes of each meeting, including a record of the disposition of 
each case. Each member of the committee is entitled to a 
copy of these papers and one copy shall be filed permanently 
with the rules committee. These files shall be open to the 
inspection of any employee. 

7. Every question to be considered and voted on by a shop 
committee shall first be reduced to writing, signed by the par- 
ties to the issue and filed with the secretary of the shop com- 
mittee. 

8. The secretary of a shop committee about to hear a case 
shall notify all witnesses whom either side desires to have 
called on said case to attend at the proper time and place. 
The names of the witnesses shall be filed with the secretary by 
the parties requesting their presence. 

9. When a member of a shop committee is directly involved 
in a point at issue, he shall be deprived of his vote, and one 
of the opposite side, to be selected by that side, shall also be 
deprived of his vote for the occasion. Committeemen thus de- 
prived of their votes may participate in the discussion. 

10. If one member of the employees' side or one member 
from the management's side is absent, one member from the 
other side shall retire. No meetings of a shop committee shall 
be held when less than two-thirds of the employee members 
and of the management members, respectively, are present. 

11. A unanimous vote of the committee shall settle any 
question. If a majority vote, however, is satisfactory to the 
employee bringing an issue to the committee, it shall be con- 
sidered as terminating the matter; the party objecting should 



PEOCEDUEE 77 

be recorded and shall have the right to submit a minority 
report. In case the majority vote is not satisfactory to the 
employee bringing the issue, the matter shall be carried to the 
next committee under the plan. 

12. Each decision or record of a committee meeting shall be 
numbered as to shop and also as to case or docket number. 
Every case shall be docketed in the order received. 

13T Each shop committee decision shall be available to the 
employee or employees bringing an issue. Copies of decisions 
shall be filed with the management and with the rules com- 
mittee and may, upon order of the rules committee, be pub- 
lished in the plant. 

14. Where it has taken some time to reach a decision, such 
decision may be made retroactive. 

15. Employee members of the shop committees will be paid 
their average earnings for time spent at regular and special 
meetings, but in no case will overtime be paid. 

These rules of procedure are practically self-explana- 
tory. Success in the operation of a shop committee 
system can not be obtained without regularity of meet- 
ings, without the fullest and freest opportunity for 
securing all the facts necessary to a decision, and with- 
out the maintenance of careful records. In some plants 
the shop committees do not meet at regular intervals, 
but are called only when there is business for them to 
transact. In such cases it should be clearly agreed that 
meetings may be held whenever there is demand from 
any member, acting usually on the request of a constit- 
uent. 

The rules of procedure adopted for the Bridgeport 
shop committee system illustrate this method of doing 
business and also suggest several interesting variations 
from the typical set of rules just given : 

METHOD OF PROCEDURE 

(30) Employees desiring to have their Department Commit- 
tee act for them, individually or collectively, whetlier as an 
appeal from a decision of their foreman, or as a direct presen- 
tation, shall file their case with the Chairman of said Com- 
mittee in writing and signed, if practicable; otherwise, the 



78 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

Chairman of the Committee shall reduce same to writing. 
These matters shall be transacted on the premises outside of 
working hours. 

(31) The Chairman of Department Committees shall accept 
for consideration all cases filed as provided under Section 30. 

(32) The Chairman of any Department CommiHee shall 
call a meeting of the Committee at such times and places as 
the circumstances demand, for the consideration of such cases 
as have been filed, and also of such matters as the Committee 
contemplates initiating. Such meeting shall be held on the 
premises but not during working hours, or on Company time, 
except upon consent of the Management. 

(33) Whether cases, or matters, considered in accordance 
with the provisions of Section 32 shall be taken up with the 
Management, shall be decided by a vote of the Committee. 
Two votes for, or against, any proposition shall decide and no 
reference or appeal to the joint Department, Executive, or 
General Committee can thereafter be made. 

(34) Whenever it is desirable for a Department Committee 
to meet with the Management for the presentation and con- 
sideration of prepared cases or other matters, the Chairman 
of said Committee shall request through the Foreman of the 
Department involved, a Joint Conference with such Repre- 
sentative or Representatives as the Management shall desig- 
nate for this purpose, not to exceed in number the member- 
ship of said Department Committee. Such request shall be 
accompanied by a specification in writing of the matters to be 
considered. 

(35) The Management shall meet with such Department 
Committee in a Joint Conference upon the date requested, or, 
if for any reason this is impracticable, upon one of the next 
six days thereafter mutually agreed upon, not counting Sun- 
days and Holidays. 

(36) Any Management shall have the privilege of calling a 
Department Committee to a Joint Conference by the method 
set forth in Sections 34 and 35. 

( 37 ) The Chairmanship of each Joint Conference shall alter- 
nate between the Chairman of the Department Committee and 
the Spokesman for the Management's Representatives. 

(38) All Joint Conferences shall be held immediately fol- 
lowing the close of the day's work upon the date fixed, unless 
by unanimous vote some other date is fixed, either in the De- 
partment involved, or in some suitable room convenient thereto 
provided by the Management for this purpose. Joint Confer- 



PROCEDURE 79 

ences may be held on Company time by consent of the Man- 
agement. 

(39) Joint Conferences shall be private except where wit- 
nesses may be called. Full and free opportunity shall be 
granted to all present to discuss, from every angle and view- 
point, all cases and matters presented by either side at each 
Joint Conference. 

(40) Immediately following discussion of any issue at a 
Joint Conference, a vote shall be taken upon the question at 
issue and a majority of two votes of the entire membership of 
the joint committee shall decide; that is five votes out of a 
joint committee of six shall control. 

(41) When an agreement has been reached the case or mat- 
ter in issue is settled beyond appeal, and shall be promptly ad- 
justed in accordance therewith. 

(42) When no agreement has been reached, the Chairman of 
the Joint Conference, unless such case be withdrawn by the 
party proposing the action, shall immediately refer in written 
form the case or matter in issue to the Chairman of the Em- 
ployees' General Committee for presentation, discussion, con- 
sideration and disposition at a Joint Conference between said 
Employees' General Committee and a like or less number of 
the Management's Representatives. 

(43) A record of proceedings of all Joint Conferences shall 
be made, signed by all members present. 

The business of the general joint committees should 
be governed by the same rules adopted for the shop 
committees, or by similar rules. 

A word or two should be said on the matter of com- 
pensation for committee work. The general practice 
seems to be for the management to pay representatives 
or employees for regular committee work. In some 
plants all. representatives are paid in accordance with 
paragraph 1'5 of the typical rules. In other plants the 
company pays only those representatives who sit on 
joint committees, and for the time spent in joint com- 
mittee sessions; time spent by employee representatives 
or committeemen in adjusting cases, gathering evidence 
and performing other functions of their office is not paid 



80 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

for. In a few plants, the company does not compensate 
the employees' representatives for any time outside of 
their regular work at the bench. 

It is difficult to make a hard and fast rule to apply 
to all cases, but certain general principles may be 
stated as a guide. In plants where the management 
does not pay employees' representatives the position 
taken — often by employees as well as by management 
— is that these representatives are officially representing 
the rank and file, and that if they should be paid for 
their services, the rank and file should pay them. This 
usually means that the unions will furnish the compen- 
sation, though in some establishments the funds of the 
mutual benefit association are drawn upon, or a special 
fund created. In the majority of plants where all repre- 
sentatives are paid for their time, the position taken is 
that, while they are primarily representing the rank 
and file, they are also representing the best interests 
of the company; that, in short, they are doing work 
for the company just as if they remained at their 
benches. Where representatives are paid only for time 
spent in actual committee meetings, the position is that 
they are then serving in a judicial capacity for the 
benefit of the entire plant, and should accordingly be 
compensated. 

Experience shows that some method of compensation 
is both desirable and necessary. The business of ad- 
justing disputes between men and management calls 
for both time and energy. It calls for time in working 
hours as well as time outside working hours. Time 
to the piece worker especially means money, and loss 
of time means loss of earnings. In practice it has 
been found that unless some method of paying for shop 
committee service is adopted, the service rendered is 
not up to standard. The various methods in use should 
be discussed fully in joint conference of men and man- 



PROCEDURE 81 

agement and a clear understanding should be arrived 
at before the committees are elected. 

Underlying the rules of procedure for shop committees 
should be, above all, the spirit of cooperation and of 
fair play. If this spirit is permitted to have full scope, 
the details will automatically adjust themselves. 



CHAPTEE IX 

SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 

This incident is significant: 

After two weeks of almost continuous sessions, a joint 
committee representing the employees and the manage- 
ment of a big industrial plant completed its job. It 
had districted the plant, agreed on the method of elec- 
tions, and drawn up the election rules and the by-laws 
of the system. In the course of the meetings employer 
and employee had come to know each other well, and the 
distrust and suspicion which had marked the first con- 
ferences had entirely given way to a feeling of mutual 
respect and confidence. 

The manager rose, and with more formality than had 
been customary in the committee, expressed his cordial 
appreciation of the spirit of cooperation which had 
been shown by the employee members, declared it his 
conviction that the management was animated by the 
same spirit, and concluded by remarking that from 
this day forward the relations between men and man- 
agement were to be on a new basis, a basis which meant 
square dealing and increased good will on each side. 

"I guess," replied the chairman of the employees' 
side of the committee, referring to the bitter strike 
which had preceded the establishment of the shop com- 
mittee system, " I guess there won't be any more serious 
disagreements between us." 

"Fll make one right here," said the manager. "I 
expect that we shall disagree. In fact, I hope that we 

82 



SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 83 

shall, because all progress is made by disagreement. 
But now we have laid down the rules of the game and 
well fight our disagreements out face to face. We'll 
play the game." 

Another incident which illustrates concretely what a 
shop committee system may accomplish through its ap- 
peal to natural human love of order took place in a 
factory during the elections. A woman stenographer, 
a member of the union, employed in the office of, let 
us say, Building A, was told by her chief that work 
was slack and was offered a transfer to another depart- 
ment. She objected, and the man next higher up in- 
formed her that her work was poor. This charge she 
resented and in consequence refused to take the trans- 
fer. The management thereupon laid her off till such 
time as the work should pick up once more. 

When this occurred there was no shop committee sys- 
tem in this plant, though a system had been agreed on 
and was about to be established. 

A Typical Case 

One of the men in Building A who happened to be a 
member of the elections committee, volunteered to do 
what he could to adjust this case for the girl. His first 
recourse was to the head of the employment office, who, 
while not directly charged with the settlement of griev- 
ances of this kind, was in the habit of lending a helping 
hand. This officer took up the case with the head of 
Building A, but was unable to adjust the matter satis- 
factorily. Both sides stood firmly on the record : The 
management insisted that there was no work for the 
girl and that she was a poor worker; they further in- 
sisted that she must expect a lay-off after having re- 
fused a transfer to another building where her services 
could be used. The girl and her advocates, on the 
other hand, insisted that this was the first time that 



84 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

her work had been unfavorably criticized, claimed that 
another girl, who did not belong to the union, had been 
engaged to supplant her, and charged that the company 
was discriminating against her because of her affiliation 
with organized labor. The case began to assume serious 
proportions. 

In the morning of the day on which Building A was 
to hold its shop committee election, the two hundred- 
odd employees in this building had become so exercised 
over the case that they stopped work. They refused to 
leave the factory or to resume work till the girl should 
be reinstated and compensated for time lost. News of 
this action spread rapidly, and in exaggerated form, 
throughout the plant. Occurring as it did in the midst 
of the elections, the incident seriously threatened the 
success of the new system. 

Yet the solution was clear and simple. A member 
of the election committee secured permission to address 
the employees of Building A. After they had been 
assembled he spoke to them in substance as follows: 

"You claim that Miss has been discharged be- 
cause of union activities. The company claims that 
she has not been discharged at all, but laid off on 
account of lack of work. Who knows all the facts in 
the case? What means have been taken to learn the 
facts ? If you will go back to work now, you will have 
the chance to elect your shop committee this afternoon, 
and your shop committee can find out the facts and make 
a fair decision. If the shop committee cannot agree, 
there is the general committee to appeal to next. Why 
lose time and money till you know what it is all about 
— till you know that you're right ? You owe it to the 
company, but first of all to yourselves to abide by the 
rules of the game." 

A viva voce vote was taken on the proposition to 
resume work till the committee election and the investi- 



SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 85 

gation by the committee. Within ten minutes the ma- 
chinery in Building A was running once more. 

Within three days the shop committee took up the 
case and rendered a unanimous decision which criticized 

the management for failure to teach Miss properly, 

while criticizing Miss for having refused the trans- 
fer. The decision recommended that she be transferred. 
The employees accepted the verdict as fair, and the case 
was definitely settled. Had there been no shop com- 
mittee, in all probability there would have been a strike, 
small or large, with all that a strike involves of loss 
to both strikers and company. 

It would be possible to fill this book with the relation 
of similar incidents showing the value to employer as 
well as to employee of a shop committee system. The 
claim is not here made that a shop committee system 
will prevent all strikes, for no such claim could be 
sustained by experience. One of the most unnecessary 
strikes in years occurred in January, 1919, in a plant 
in which a shop committee system had been installed 
only a few months before. In this particular case the 
condition which caused the strike was not only a local 
condition — it was a condition affecting other plants in 
the same industry. But it may be stated with a reason- 
able degree of accuracy that in the majority of situations 
where a strike is among the possibilities, it will be 
averted by a shop committee system, provided the causes 
are local to the plant, and provided further that there 
is the feeling on both sides that each side has acted and 
will act in good faith. 

Petty Tyranny Checked 

In the ordinary routine of business, a shop committee 
system eliminates much of the friction which is only 
too likely to arise from the misunderstandings or from 
the petty tyranny of " bosses." This feature was re- 



86 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

ferred to in the report of the Government Commission 
which studied the Colorado plan (see Chapter I). It 
is an important consideration. Even in the best man- 
aged industrial plants it is impossible to avoid the evils 
which arise from man clad with a little brief authority. 
The petty boss, whether leading hand, price setter or 
foreman, is, first of all, concerned with securing produc- 
tion. Often he is in direct competition with the fore- 
men of other jobs, and naturally he desires to make a 
record for his shop. This motive frequently leads him 
to all sorts of small and unnecessary injustices toward 
his employees, and if one foreman succeeds as a result 
of tyranny, his competitor is likely to go and do like- 
wise. The effect on the men is bad. They fight fire 
with fire and may turn out to be more intolerant and 
less humanly reasonable than the foreman who started 
the trouble. 

A shop committee system acts as a corrective and 
check to this kind of thing. Both foreman and em- 
ployee know that their actions may be investigated by 
men higher up. What they do is a matter of written 
record in the minutes of the shop committee. They 
become responsible, in short, to the rank and file of the 
representatives of employers and employees who make 
up the government. They feel keenly that the great 
moral power of public opinion is organized and that it 
stands ready to judge them. There is the same differ- 
ence between the old and the new way of conducting 
business between men and management as there is be- 
tween life in an unorganized community and one in 
which law and order have been established. 

The point of view of managers of industrial plants 
which have adopted shop committee systems is well 
put in this quotation from an interview with E. H. 
Eice, acting manager of the Lynn Works of the General 
Electric Company: 



SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 87 

". . . Through these joint committees which I am now 
speaking of, one of the chief advantages of the plan may be 
realized, namely, education of the employee members of these 
committees in the needs, requirements and technicalities of 
the business may be brought about, and through these members 
an education of the employees themselves may be secured which 
can in no other way be brought about. 

" There are now many industries throughout the country in 
which similar plans are in operation and many cases of satis- 
factory working of such plans are reported. In these cases it 
is found that a great education of employees and of manage- 
ment has taken place. The employees find that many of the 
things with which they are dissatisfied are promptly remedied 
while others are more fanciful than real. They come to a 
better realization of the difficulties of management; they learn 
the need of output; of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay; 
they get the spirit of the management and get into step with it. 

" On the other hand the foremen learn to sympathize with 
the point of view of those employees who are fair and loyal; 
they learn better methods of dealing to secure results; they 
learn not to be arbitrary but to be right. 

" The management is better in touch with the spirit and 
atmosphere of the shop; the shop is better in touch with the 
spirit and aims of the management." 

The average laboring man is as enthusiastic about 
shop committees as is the intelligent employer. To 
members of organized labor, committees and committee 
work and procedure are an old story; and union as 
well as non-union employees are generally quick to 
realize what an advantage it brings to their side to have 
a fair and orderly method of transacting business with 
employers. 

This point may be illustrated by the comment of a 
labor leader representing both organized and unorgan- 
ized workers, on a shop committee system installed in 
accordance with an award of the War Labor Board. 
For many months prior to the award, which, incidentally 
raised the wages some twenty per cent., the feeling of 
men toward management and of management toward 
men in this plant was of an almost unbelievable bitter- 



88 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

ness. It was the kind of bitterness which seems to 
revolve in a vicious circle, requiring some radical out- 
side force to destroy it. Every step taken under the 
award was hotly contested, including, of course, the 
shop committee system. But when the fighting was 
over, and the shop committees were recognized and 
running, a new atmosphere seemed to pervade the plant. 
Said the labor leader : 

"We were very thankful to the Board for bringing 
our wages up, but that isn't the most important thing 
the Board did." 

" What is ? " he was asked. 

" The committee system. Giving us poor devils a 
chance to go to the old man and tell him about condi- 
tions without the risk of being jumped for it by some 
straw boss down the line. You've never worked here — 
and you're lucky. But if you had, you would appreciate 
what this new deal means to the rank and file." 

Efficiency 

In the best and largest sense of the term the shop 
committee brings efficiency into a factory. It is not a 
one-sided efficiency. It is an efficiency which applies 
with equal force to employer and employee. " This 
committee system," the head of a division of a great 
plant once told the writer, " is a benefit to me because 
it enables me to get better reports of the work from 
the men. I have always had plenty of reports from 
my assistants, but the man at the machine has been 
silent. Now I begin to know what he is thinking about 
his work, and I find that he has some very valuable 
ideas about the way the work should be done. There 
used to be quite a little cheating — running up the 
indicators of punch presses without material, and so 
on. That doesn't go any more. The committees frown 
on it. Also there used to be loss of production and 



SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 89 

friction because of personal rows between the fore- 
men and the men under them. That doesn't go any- 
more, either, and we've got the committees to thank 
for that. The manager estimates that the system costs 
us about $8,000 a year. I figure that it doesn't cost 
us a cent, and that we make money on it in increased 
contentment and efficiency." 

The uses of shop committees, though they are many 
and various, are all in the fulfillment of the same 
general purpose. The Whitley report suggests a large 
variety of problems which can be adequately handled 
by shop committees and which can not be adequately 
handled in any other way yet devised. 

Another illustration of the wide scope and solid 
worth of joint committees comes from the record of 
the United States Fuel Administration, which, at a 
critical moment in the war, organized a system of spe- 
cial production committees for the bituminous coal 
fields. Three representatives of the mine workers and 
three men representing the company sat on each com- 
mittee. Their duties included the following: 

To make known the fact that there must be a large increase 
in tonnage without which the United States Government will 
fail in its war work. 

To pass careful, and impartial judgment upon the reasons 
given for absence, short hours worked, or other occurrences 
which may have resulted in loss of tonnage. . . . 

To clear the record of any worker who has lost time or ton- 
nage through his own fault, provided the worker is willing to 
make up the lost time or tonnage and the operator is satisfied 
to have him do so, and provided also that in doing so he will 
not violate any rules or mining laws and will not render it 
difficult or impossible for the operator to give an equal turn 
of cars. . . . 

Etc. 

The shop committee movement is young, and its 
limitations are more apparent to some minds than its 



90 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

advantages. But its limitations are — or should be — 
nothing but the ordinary bounds of common sense and 
reason. No human association, no matter how ideally 
organized, can be perfect. On the other hand, it is 
equally true that the possibilities of the shop committee 
movement are wider than the possibilities of the trades 
union and employers' associations movements, for the 
reason that the shop committee represents the coming 
together of two elements which hitherto have been con- 
spicuous because they have been apart. The shop com- 
mittee, in short, is a simple and familiar device ap- 
plied in a new way to meet and solve very old problems. 
It succeeds where it is estimated at its real worth — 
no more, and no less. 



CHAPTER X 

THE SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 

The shop committee is so new a thing in the United 
States that its relationship to the trade union is still 
a matter of speculation. Employers ask: Is the shop 
committee a substitute for the union? Does the shop 
committee encourage unionism? Employees ask: Is 
the shop committee a device of capital to prevent union- 
ism? Does the shop committee discourage unionism? 
These questions we cannot answer with certainty, for 
the shop committee is an experiment still — an ex- 
periment in industrial government. Its history is still 
to be made. 

Yet we may gather from the scanty available records 
here in the United States as well as from the larger 
experience in Great Britain enough information to in- 
dicate what the relationship between the shop com- 
mittee and the union labor movement will probably 
grow into. Let us first look at the situation in Eng- 
land. 

An article in The Public 1 is highly suggestive: 

" Strikes on a large scale in Great Britain, apparently with- 
out the knowledge or consent of the trade union leaders, are 
exciting much comment on this side of the water by those who 
think that they see an outbreak of Bolshevism in England. 
Such apprehension springs from a lack of understanding of the 
British labor movement. 

" There are really two labor movements in Great Britain. 
One is the ordinary craft unionism, which parallels American 
trade unionism very closely; the other is the shop stewards' 

i The Public, Feb. 15, 1919. 

91 



92 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

movement. And it is not an uncommon thing for the British 
worker to come within the scope of both movements. Some- 
times the two pull together, and sometimes they are in conflict. 

" The craft unions are nationally organized like our own, 
and all men are organized by trades into large national socie- 
ties. The shop stewards are individuals or committees who 
represent the workers of all trades in individual shops or 
plants. Sometimes they are merely representatives of the va- 
rious unions. At other times they represent the workers di- 
rectly and are directly elected. They frequently represent all 
the workers in a shop, whether members of a union or not. 
Occasionally conflict is avoided by requiring the shop steward 
to be a member of some union. 

" There are thus two systems pulling together sometimes 
and pulling in different directions at other times, one organ- 
ized upon a craft basis and the other upon a shop basis. The 
shop stewards have federated, and have built up organizations 
composed wholly of shop stewards, which cover large areas. 
These federations are headed toward the * one big union ' 
scheme advocated by a number of American leaders. 

" There is some advantage in having the shop steward sys- 
tem. It decentralizes trade union negotiations remarkably 
and increases solidarity. It settles minor grievances by direct* 
contact with the employer, rather than through the interven- 
tion of a union delegate and the use of very complex and cum- 
bersome trade union machinery. The shop steward system is 
a short-cut. It is a protest against craft union bureaucracy, 
and its rapid growth during the war was caused by the inflexi- 
bility of the trade union. There are some disadvantages, how- 
ever, as the present situation in Great Britain will exemplify. 
The duality of the organization raises the question of alle- 
giance. Sometimes local grievances result in strikes, and 
where there is no point of contact between the shop stewards 
and the trade unions, members of trade unions who owe part 
of their allegiance to a local shop steward find themselves tak- 
ing part in unauthorized strikes called by the stewards. 
These strikes frequently spread and affect great areas. 

" This is literally what has been going on for some time over 
the greater part of the United Kingdom. Labor disturbances 
of considerable magnitude between employer and employee are 
occurring without any knowledge on the part of the national 
officials of the various crafts involved. British trade unions 
are in much the same position that the American Government 
was in just before the Civil War. They have two kinds of 
government in the same area, local and national, and each 



SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 93 

claims to be supreme. A recent proposal to unite the two 
movements and agree on a practicable division of sovereignty 
was voted down, but sheer necessity will bring them together 
in the near future." 

Making every allowance for important differences 
in national psychology and in the character of 
the British and American labor movements, this analysis 
describes with surprising accuracy the sitiation which, 
in the opinion of the writer, will develop in the United 
States. Mainly for the reason that the shop committee 
movement is not as far advanced here as it is in Great 
Britain, no such conflict as that pictured in the article 
just quoted has yet arisen. It is to be hoped that none 
will arise and that a final and satisfactory relationship 
between shop committees and the unions will be worked 
out in peaceable fashion. But that there will eventually 
be a merging of certain of the interests of the shop 
committees and certain of the interests of the unions 
can no longer seriously be doubted. 

From its very earliest beginnings in the United States 
the shop committee movement has been neutral on the 
union question. For example, in its contract with its 
employees under the plan of representation described in 
Chapter I, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company speci- 
fically guaranteed the right of the workers to belong 
to a union or not, as they chose. A similar guarantee 
is given or implied in every plan of representation, and 
as has been pointed out more than once, the right to 
belong to unions without fear of discrimination or dis- 
charge was one of the agreed principles of the War 
Labor Board. 

Certain Premises 

On the surface, therefore, the shop committee is 
neither a union nor a non-union scheme. It is primarily 
a method of organizing the employees of a given plant 



94 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

with the employers for the purpose of bringing about 
efficiency and better working conditions. The charac- 
ter of this organization is in several respects different 
from trade union organization. One important respect 
is that the organization is dual or joint and that it is 
based on the theory of cooperation rather than on the 
theory of competition or conflict. 

Nevertheless the shop committee has a distinct con- 
nection with the union labor movement, and it is well 
for both employer and employee to face the facts and 
understand the nature of this connection. 

The shop committee theory admits as an important 
premise that employees have the right to organize as 
employees of a given plant in order to deal, or bargain, 
collectively, with the management. If this idea is not 
recognized, there can be no shop committee system. 
If it is recognized and lived up to, a shop committee 
system can be created and will succeed. 

In the second place, the shop committee theory ad- 
mits the premise that the organization which will be 
most effective in securing the results which are mutually 
desired, is an organization of the employees of a given 
plant, and of them alone. Many managers declare: 
" I will meet with my own employees at any time, but 
not with union representatives." To such managers the 
shop committee necessarily makes a strong appeal, for 
it is a method of securing orderly and representative 
meetings with employees and only with employees. 

The primary function of the shop committee is, there- 
fore, local to the plant, and shop committee systems 
may exist in open shops or in closed shops without 
effecting any basic change in the relation of the manage- 
ment to organized labor. This fact is an impelling 
reason with many employers for favoring the shop com- 
mittee movement and for utilizing it in their plants. 

Putting to one side the question of union recognition 



SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 95 

which the shop committee does not answer because it 
does not affect it, let us look at the bearing of the shop 
committee on the union movement as a whole. 

We may say that there are roughly three kinds of labor 
organizations: the old standard craft or trade unions; 
the newer industrial or group unions; and the labor 
councils or local central labor unions, composed of repre- 
sentatives of various union labor elements in a com- 
munity. The prime object of all these organizations 
is mutual benefit through various forms of collective 
bargaining, and the differences between them are chiefly 
differences in methods of organization and tactics. On 
the employers' side there are manufacturers' associa- 
tions, chambers of commerce, boards of directors and 
trades or industry councils which represent roughly 
the economic interests of employers as a class and as 
of a particular industry. For the purpose of learning 
the place which the shop committee occupies in relation 
to this system of organization it is not necessary to 
analyze it down to a finer point. 

Into this complex system comes the shop committee. 

Like the trade union the shop committee provides 
a method of collective bargaining as to wages, hours 
and general conditions of labor. In plants where the 
trade union is recognized, either frankly or indirectly, 
the establishment of a shop committee system does not 
change fundamentally the relationship between the man- 
agement and its employees. In plants where the trade 
union is not recognized, the shop committee provides 
the only means of establishing collective bargaining, 
and to this extent therefore accomplishes one of the 
things for which the trade union exists. 

Shop Committees Overlap Unions 

Unlike the trade union, the shop committee provides 
a method of handling all sorts of conditions in a plant, 



96 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

general and special alike. In plants where the union 
is recognized, the shop committee, while not affecting 
fundamentally the relationship between the management 
and its employees, provides both with machinery for 
the joint settlement of local or domestic plant disputes 
which are not of enough importance to warrant calling 
in union representatives. In plants where the union 
is not recognized, the shop committee performs this 
same function and in addition provides, or attempts 
to provide, machinery for the settling of all disputes, 
great and small. The shop committee therefore to a 
certain extent in closed shops and to a large extent in 
open shops takes the place of the trade union. 

For the reasons just enumerated the shop committee 
appeals naturally to employers who do not recognize 
the unions, and conversely tends to arouse the antago- 
nism of labor union advocates and members. 

Another important fact in this connection is that the 
shop committee movement in the United States is neither 
primarily a labor movement nor a movement promoted 
solely by employers. It has advocates and opponents 
in both camps. It has had, as we have seen, a power- 
ful promoter in the United States Government, which, 
it is to be assumed, acted as representative neither 
of capital nor of labor, but of the public. In its present 
stage, then, the shop committee movement is in the 
best possible position for development along lines which 
will make it of the largest service to the three parties 
concerned in the maintenance of industrial peace, 
namely, employers, employees and the public. 

Wholly outside of the relationship established by shop 
committees between men and management in given 
plants is the relationship between the shop committee 
and the general union labor movement. We have seen 
that the establishment of a shop committee system in 
a factory does not in theory at least bring about union 



SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 97 

recognition, and that it does not, in theory once more, 
encourage unionism. But does it not in fact advance 
the tenets of unionism in general? Is not the shop 
committee a training school in industrial organization, 
and will not the workers thus taught the advantages 
and technique of organization, incline more and more 
to enter the wider field of labor organization as repre- 
sented by the trade union? Is it a fair statement of 
the case to say that the shop committee is at best a 
temporary expedient designed to avoid the apparent 
recognition of the union, while in reality recognizing 
the essential principles of the trade union? 

At just this point it is well to emphasize one central 
difference between the labor situation in the United 
States and the situation in England, to which we 
naturally turn for information and guidance on mat- 
ters both of political and of industrial government. 
The trade union movement in England is older and 
more mature than it is in this country. The ques- 
tion of union recognition has there been decided in the 
main in favor of the unions. We are consequently 
not surprised to find in the Whitley report that works 
or shop committees are strongly recommended, not as 
a means of supplanting the unions, but as a means of 
supplementing the work of the unions of employers as 
well as the unions of employees. We read in the 
supplement to this report : x 

", . . Our proposals as a whole assume the existence of 
organizations of both employers and employed and a frank and 
full recognition of such organizations. Works committees es- 
tablished otherwise than in accordance with these principles 
could not be regarded as a part of the scheme we have recom- 
mended, and might indeed be a hindrance to the development 
of the new relations in industry to which we look forward. 
We think the aim should be the complete and coherent organ- 

i See Appendix. 



98 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

ization of the trade on both sides, and works committees will 
be of value in so far as they contribute to such a result. 

" We are of opinion that the complete success of works com- 
mittees necessarily depends largely upon the degree and effi- 
ciency of organization in the trade, and upon the extent to 
which the committees can be linked up, through organizations 
that we have in mind, with the remainder of the scheme which 
we are proposing, viz., the district and national councils. We 
think it important to state that the success of the works com- 
mittees would be very seriously interfered with if the idea 
existed that such committees were used, or likely to be used, 
by employers in opposition to trade-unionism. It is strongly 
felt that the setting up of works committees without the co- 
operation of the trade-unions and employers' associations in 
the trade or branch of trade concerned would stand in the 
way of the improved industrial relationships which in these 
reports we are endeavoring to further." 

To the great mass of American labor the statement 
of these principles has doubtless been a cause of satis- 
faction: certainly these principles meet with the ap- 
proval of organized American labor. To the great 
mass of American employers the quotation just given 
will doubtless appeal as an excellent argument against 
the establishment of shop committees in the United 
States. Viewed in the light of the Whitley report, 
the shop committee is seen to be an adjunct to the 
trade union, and the encouragement of the one appar- 
ently means the encouragement of the other with all that 
that implies of renewal of the old conflict, abuses of 
privilege, and the like. 

But this overlooks the vital fact that the shop com- 
mittee is a dual or joint form of organization. This 
fact brings into the situation an entirely new element, 
affecting the situation fundamentally. Moreover, it 
must be remembered that the shop committee is but 
one branch of a new system of industrial government, 
already in existence in England and rapidly taking root 
in the United States also. This system of government 



SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 99 

was outlined in the Whitley report. 1 Like the shop 
committee, it is dual or joint in character. The shop 
committee is but the lowest unit; the next highest is 
the joint industrial council for the locality; the next 
highest the joint industrial council for the industry; 
and the highest we may conceive to be a joint council 
or parliament for all the industries of a nation. Such 
an organization of both employers and employees is 
fast on the road to realization in the United States. 

The Joint Union Principle 

Viewed in this light, then, the question of the re- 
lationship of the shop committee to the union appears 
to be a matter of relatively minor importance, for the 
reason that both the labor union and the employers' 
union are in process of changing their functions and 
of adjusting themselves to the new forms of joint 
union based on the principles laid down in the previous 
chapters as the principles of the shop committee. It is 
now, therefore, seen to be the fact that the shop com- 
mittee promotes unionization of the workers, just as it 
promotes unionization of the employers, but that it 
promotes this unionization for a fresh purpose and in a 
fresh way. Motive in human affairs is everything. 
The motive of the old labor union and of the old manu- 
facturers' association was primarily defensive, hence 
militant, and hence to some extent destructive. The 
motive of the new union is constructive. It looks toward 
cooperation instead of competition, towards strife only 
as a last resort. 

" Labor believes," writes W. L. MacKenzie King in the book 
already quoted in these pages, " that its exclusion from repre- 
sentation in the control of industry has led to vast injustice, 
and to the organization of business for profit alone; and that 

i See Chapter I. 



100 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

it has occasioned at times the misuse of official power by tha 
courts, the police, and military authorities in support of arbi- 
trary conduct on the part of corporations. Herein lies the 
fundamental cause of the warfare between capital and labor. 
Denied the right to cooperate with capital, labor competes with 
capital. Industrial life, instead of being in the nature of a 
partnership, becomes a sort of guerilla warfare in which 
capital seeks to increase profits at the expense of labor, and 
labor seeks to increase wages at the expense of capital. On 
the one side is a misunderstanding of producing costs; on the 
other side, a misunderstanding of the workers' needs and 
aspirations. Strikes and lockouts are the crude expression of 
the resentment which this mutual misunderstanding begets. 
Until labor and capital are both democratically represented in 
the control of the business carrying their respective invest- 
ments, this warfare and anarchy are certain to persist. The 
organization of business, its terminology and its spirit, must 
all change if industry is to fulfill its true mission and be made 
to reflect a real partnership." 

Except therefore to those minds which do not yet 
clearly see that the industrial world of to-day and of 
to-morrow is a different world from that of yesterday, 
the answer to the questions at the head of this chapter 
is this: 

The shop committee encourages unionism. It is not 
the unionism of the past, inadequate, imperfect, strug- 
gling sometimes blindly towards juster relations between 
capital and labor. The shop committee, meaning 
thereby the idea of joint shop, and industrial commit- 
tees and councils, is a substitute for trade unionism. 
It is a substitute which the unions and the employers 
will welcome. The shop committee, therefore, is not a 
device of capital to prevent unionism: its seeds lie 
deep in the soil of unionism, so deep that unionism of 
employees alone can not cause them to grow and flourish. 
The shop committee has in it the germ of the hope 
of the future of industrial peace and the cooperative 
commonwealth." 



APPENDIX 

Supplementary Keport on Works Committees 1 

In our first and second reports we have referred to the estab- 
lishment of works committees, representative of the manage- 
ment and of the workpeople, and appointed from within the 
works, as an essential part of the scheme of organization sug- 
gested to secure improved relations between employers and 
employed. The purpose of the present report is to deal more 
fully with the proposal to institute such committees. 

2. Better relations between employers and their workpeople 
can best be arrived at by granting to the latter a greater share 
in the consideration of matters with which they are concerned. 
In every industry there are certain questions, such as rates of 
wages and hours of work, which should be settled by district 
or national agreement, and with any matter so settled no 
works committee should be allowed to interfere; but there are 
also many questions closely affecting daily life and comfort in, 
and the success of, the business, and affecting in no small de- 
gree efficiency of working, which are peculiar to the individual 
workshop or factory. The purpose of a works committee is to 
establish and maintain a system of cooperation in all these 
workshop matters. 

3. We have throughout our recommendations proceeded upon 
the assumption that the greatest success is likely to be achieved 
by leaving to the representative bodies of employers and em- 
ployees in each industry the maximum degree of freedom to 
settle for themselves the precise form of council or committee 
which should be adopted, having regard in each case to the 
particular circumstances of the trade; and, in accordance with 
this principle, we refrain from indicating any definite form of 
constitution for the works committees. Our proposals as a 
whole assume the existence of organizations of both employers 
and employed and a frank and full recognition of such organ- 

i Supplementary to the Whitley report. Great Britain, Min- 
istry of Reconstruction. Committee on relations between em- 
ployers and employed. London, 1918. 

101 



102 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

izatlons. Works committees established otherwise than in 
accordance with these principles could not be regarded as a 
part of the scheme we have recommended, and might indeed 
be a hindrance to the development of the new relations in in- 
dustry to which we look forward. We think the aim should be 
the complete and coherent organization of the trade on both 
sides, and works committees will be of value in so far as they 
contribute to such a result. 

4. We are of opinion that the complete success of works 
committees necessarily depends largely upon the degree and 
efficiency of organization in the trade, and upon the extent 
to which the committees can be linked up, through organiza- 
tions that we have in mind, with the remainder of the scheme 
which we are proposing, viz., the district and national councils. 
We think it important to state that the success of the works 
committees would be very seriously interfered with if the idea 
existed that such committees were used, or likely to be used, 
by employers in opposition to trade-unionism. It is strongly 
felt that the setting up of works committees without the 
cooperation of the trade-unions and the employers' associations 
in the trade or branch of trade concerned would stand in the 
way of the improved industrial relationships which in these 
reports we are endeavoring to further. 

5. In an industry where the workpeople are unorganized, or 
only very partially organized, there is a danger that works 
committees may be used, or thought to be used, in opposition 
to trade-unionism. It is important that such fears should be 
guarded against in the initiation of any scheme. We look 
upon successful works committees as the broad base of the 
industrial structure which we have recommended, and as the 
means of enlisting the interest of the workers in the success 
both of the industry to which they are attached and of the 
workshop or factory where so much of their life is spent. 
These committees should not, in constitution or methods or 
working, discourage trade organizations. 

6. Works committees, in our opinion, should have regular 
meetings at fixed times, and, as a general rule, not less fre- 
quently than once a fortnight. They should always keep in 
the forefront the idea of constructive cooperation in the im- 
provement of the industry to which they belong. Suggestions 
of all kinds tending to improvement should be frankly wel- 
comed and freely discussed. Practical proposals should be 
examined from all points of view. There is an undeveloped 
asset of constructive ability — valuable alike to the industry 
and to the State — awaiting the means of realization; prob- 



APPENDIX 103 

lems, old and new, will find their solution in a frank partner- 
ship of knowledge, experience and good will. Works commit- 
tees would fail in their main purpose if they existed only to 
smooth over grievances. 

7. We recognize that, from time to time, matters will arise 
which the management or the workmen consider to be ques- 
tions they cannot discuss in these joint meetings. When this 
occurs, we anticipate that nothing but good will come from 
the friendly statement of the reasons why the reservation is 
made. 

8. We regard the successful development and utilization of 
works committees in any business on the basis recommended 
in this report as of equal importance with its commercial and 
scientific efficiency; and we think that in every case one of the 
partners or directors, or some other responsible representative 
of the management, would be well advised to devote a sub- 
stantial part of his time and thought to the good wording and 
development of such a committee. 

9. There has been some experience, both before the War and 
during the War, of the benefits of works committees, and we 
think it should be recommended most strongly to employers 
and employed that, in connection with the scheme for the estab- 
lishment of national and district industrial councils, they 
should examine this experience with a view to the institution 
of works committees on proper lines, in works where the 
conditions render their formation practicable. We have rec- 
ommended that the Ministry of Labor should prepare a sum- 
mary of the experience available with reference to works 
committees, both before and during the War, including infor- 
mation as to any rules or reports relating to such committees, 
and should issue a memorandum thereon for the guidance of 
employers and workpeople generally, and we understand that 
such a memorandum is now in course of preparation. 

10. In order to insure uniform and common principles of 
action, it is essential that where national and district indus- 
trial councils exist the works committees should be in close 
touch with them, and the scheme for linking up works com- 
mittees with the councils should be considered and determined 
by the national councils. 

11. We have considered it better not to attempt to indicate 
any specific form of works committees. Industrial establish- 
ments show such infinite variation in size, number of persons 
employed, multiplicity of departments, and other conditions, 
that the particular form of works committees must necessarily 
be adapted to the circumstances of each case. It would, there- 



104 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 

fore, be impossible to formulate any satisfactory scheme which 
does not provide a large measure of elasticity. 

We are confident that the nature of the particular organiza- 
tion necessary for the various cases will be settled without 
difficulty by the exercise of good will on both sides. 

Existing Shop Committee Systems 

As this book goes to press (April, 1919), many large and 
small industrial plants are putting in shop committee systems. 
It is therefore impossible to report a complete list of such sys- 
tems in existence in the United States at the present time. 
The following list is admittedly incomplete and is offered to 
the reader for whatever it may be worth. 

Plans installed by the National War Labor Board 
Bethlehem Steel Co., South Bethlehem, Pa. 
Corn Products Refining Co., four plants, Granite City, Ills., 

Argo, Ills., Pekin, Ills., and Edgewater, N. J. 
General Electric Co., two plants, Pittsfield, Mass., and Lynn, 

Mass. 
Maryland Pressed Steel Co., Hagerstown, Md. 
Mason Machine Works, Taunton, Mass. 
Munition Establishments at Bridgeport, Conn., over sixty in 

number. 
Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co., Philadelphia, Pa. 
Smith & Wesson Co., Springfield, Mass. 
Standard Wheel Co., Terre Haute, Ind. 
Waynesboro, Pa., machine shops. 
Willys-Overland Plant, Elyria, Ohio. 

In addition, the War Labor Board ordered shop committee 
systems in the Virginia Bridge and Iron Co., Roanoke, Va. ; 
the Southern California Iron and Steel Co., Los Angeles, Calif.; 
the Worthington Pump and Machinery Corporation and the 
Power and Mining Works, Cudahy, Wis.; the New York Cen- 
tral Iron Works, Inc., Hagerstown, Md.; the Savage Arms 
Corporation, Utica, N. Y. ; and others. The plans first listed 
are apparently the most elaborate. 

Other Plans 

Colorado Fuel and Iron Co., Colorado. 
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, Bayonne, N. J. 
International Harvester Co., Chicago, Ills., several plants. 
Wm. Demnth & Co., Richmond Hill, N. Y. 
Packard Piano Co., Fort Wayne, Ind. 



APPENDIX 105 

Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, Sparrow's Point, Md. 

Printz-Biederman Co., Cleveland, 0. 

Morris Herrmann & Co., Newark, N. J. 

Irving-Pitt Manufacturing Co., Kansas City, Mo. 

American Rolling Mills Co., Middletown, 0. 

Browning Co., Cleveland, 0. 

Acme Wire Co., New Haven, Conn. 

Dennison Manufacturing Co., Framingham, Mass. 

Dutchess Manufacturing Co., Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 

Globe Wernicke Co., Cincinnati, 0. 

Hart Schaffner & Marx, Chicago, Ills. 

Hickey-Freeman Co., Rochester, N. Y. 

Hydraulic Pressed Steel Co., Cleveland, 0. 

Jeffrey Mfg. Co., Kansas City, Mo. 

The Joseph & Feiss Co., Cleveland, O. 

Leeds Northrup Co., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Proctor and Gamble Co., Ivorydale, O. 

White Motor Co., Cleveland, 0. 

Carroll Foundry and Machine Co., Bucyrus, O. 

Hercules Powder Co., Kenvil, N. J. 

Sidney Blumenthal Co., Shelton, Conn. 

Morse Dry Dock Co., Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Garner Print Works, Wappinger Falls, N. Y. 

Sprague Electric Works, Bloomfield, N. J. 

Midvale Steel and Ordnance Co., and subsidiaries, Johns- 
town, Pa. 

Shipyards wherever covered by Government awards. 

Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, Portland, Ore. 
( headquarters ) . 

Inland Steel Co., Indiana Harbor, Ind. 



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